Nine northwest European countries are set to commit to speeding up the deployment of offshore wind capacity on Monday, days after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized “money-losing windmills”, which, he said, were partly to blame for Europe’s economic decline.
The UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway will pledge on Monday at the international North Sea Summit in Hamburg, Germany, to accelerate offshore wind power via large-scale cross-border projects, according to a draft declaration of the summit seen by Reuters.
These countries plan to have as much as 300 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by 2050, of which 100 GW are expected to come from cross-border projects.
The pledge will come days after President Trump told the audience in Davos “Because of my landslide election victory, the United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse which befell every European nation that pursued the Green New Scam – perhaps the greatest hoax in history.”
President Trump also said “There are windmills all over Europe. There are windmills all over the place, and they are losers. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses, and the worst that country is doing.”
Earlier this month, the UK awarded a record-breaking 8.4 GW capacity of offshore wind in its latest auction round, which puts Britain “firmly on track to achieve its clean power mission by 2030,” the government said.
The Contracts for Difference AR7 auction secured offshore wind capacity capable of generating enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 12 million UK homes.
Germany, for its part, is trying to get its offshore wind auctions back on track, following a disastrous flop in the latest auction last year without a single bid made.
The German Parliament has approved legislation narrowing the capacity in the 2026 tender to just 2.5 GW to 5 GW, compared with an earlier plan of auctioning off 6 GW of offshore wind capacity and with as much as 10 GW offered in the auction in August.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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