“The preliminary draft of the 2024 area development plan brings us a decisive step closer to the long-term expansion goals for offshore wind energy in Germany,” explains BWO Managing Director Stefan Thimm. For the first time, sufficient space has now been taken into account to actually implement 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2035 and at least 70 GW by 2045.  

Nevertheless, the BWO sees a need for improvement in some areas: “A changed order in the tendering of new areas could lead to a higher total electricity yield and thus help to implement the goals quickly,” continues Thimm. The lower the shading effects, the more electricity the projects can ultimately produce. “The tender for additional areas for hydrogen production and the development of energy islands should also be taken into account in the draft. Many companies are already in the starting blocks with good concepts and ideas, but are still waiting for the legal go-ahead to be able to implement their projects. We should remove the obstacles here as quickly as possible,” said Thimm. 

But the draft leaves other important points unclear. These include, among other things, the questions about the future offshore rescue infrastructure, from which area the new standard connection concept of 132 kV for the park's internal cabling should be used and - quite fundamentally - how the specifications of the FEP 2024 relate to those of the FEP 2023. 

This morning the BWO submitted a detailed statement to the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH). You can download the full document here:

• BWO statement on the preliminary draft of the 2024 area development plan