Perhaps the wind industry’s problems are more fundamental than those presented by US policies. Why else would TotalEnergies, the company that jumped at the chance to annul its costly romance with US offshore wind, be looking for a way out of its German commitments?
NDR / Süddeutsche Zeitung: TotalEnergies is seeking to quit a major offshore wind energy project in Germany for which it offered to pay six billion euros in a 2023 state auction, arguing that slow grid connections and a deteriorating economic environment have triggered the decision.
According to the reports, energy company BP, which also won a successful multi-billion euro bid in 2023, could seek a similar opt-out. After transferring its offshore wind activities into a subsidiary in 2025, the new company is said to be scaling back and ultimately planning to shut down its offices in Berlin and Hamburg.
Does this sound familiar? The mood in Germany’s offshore wind industry and elsewhere in Europe has shifted markedly in recent years. While bidders in offshore auctions in 2023 were ready to pay billions of euros for the right to implement new projects, a subsequent auction round in 2025 failed to attract a single bid. According to offshore wind industry association BWO, the meager expansion of less than 1 GW annually since 2020 was mainly triggered by a spike in investment and capital costs.
Revisiting some quotes published following the 2023 German wind auction:
Environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH, not the best acronym in English 😉) called the result a “quantum leap” for offshore wind energy. “Wind power at sea is now so economically attractive that project developers are outbidding each other for access to marine areas,” said DUH executive director Sascha Müller-Kraenner. “The fairy tale of expensive green electricity is thus finally off the table.” (This quote didn’t age well!)
“The sums are obscene,” an industry source, who was part of a non-successful bid, told business daily Handelsblatt. (Irrational bidding similar to what we saw during the 2022 U.S. Atlantic Wind Sale.)
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 