Vision
The hub-and-spoke concept offers a solution to the challenge of integrating renewable energy – we intend to facilitate the realisation of a first project in the early 2030s.
From vision to realisation
The latest concept paper offers a comprehensive overview of knowledge and insights from the consortium.
Sharing of feasibility results 2021 to 2022 (November 2022)
The North Sea is an offshore wind energy powerhouse
The North Sea holds a vast offshore wind energy potential. Offshore wind is one of the key building blocks for the green transition of Europe and to meet the Paris Climate Goals. This is reflected by the 2050 capacity target of 300 GW set by the European Commission.
Countries must come together
So far, energy policies in Europe have been mostly nationally focussed with inter-national cooperation only recently starting up. Further acceleration of cooperation initiatives is required to realise the full potential of the North Sea: The increasingly large and variable volume of offshore wind electricity will be difficult to integrate, and there is no single silver bullet solution.
Time for an ambitious next step
Harnessing the power of the North Sea requires us to look at the whole North Sea area as one, and comprehensively rethink the energy systems of all of North-West Europe. This large-scale thinking is the only way to timely meet decarbonisation targets.
A solution is at hand
The North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) is an ambitious new approach to the challenge of integrating renewable energy. Today, climate policy is largely national, decoupled between energy sectors and incremental. The NSWPH takes a very different perspective. It is transnational, integrated and a step-change to a massive build out of offshore wind in the North Sea. The hub-and-spoke concept is able to link together the energy systems of North-West Europe in one well-planned and coordinated network while connecting large amounts of offshore wind. It has unique characteristics:
- Transnational: by connecting multiple countries through a hub-and-spoke concept
- Hybrid: by combining interconnection with the connection of offshore wind
- Cross-sector: by integrating different energy sectors and energy carriers
Cooperation is the way forward – The NSWPH consortium is helping to pave the way
The NSWPH consortium was founded in March
2017 and consists of the leading TSOs of North Sea Countries; Energinet, Gasunie and TenneT. Our work focusses on timely addressing the main challenges on the way to realising a first hub in the early 2030s, and to support governments and policy makers in their decision-making processes.
Main Insights
Given the long lead times of large-scale offshore infrastructure projects, several challenges need to be solved early on to provide investment certainty to project developers and stakeholders. We continuously conduct analyses to support decision-making and investigate the broader energy system impact of the concept, the costs and benefits, the regulatory changes required and a fitting market setup. In our concept paper, we share our insights on four overarching topics that we developed over the previous 1.5 years.
