Nine governments and over 100 offshore wind companies signed a pact at the North Sea Summit in Hamburg last week to unlock €1trn of investment in European offshore wind in the 2030s and foster cross-border projects.
President Trump vowed on 21st January not to take Greenland from Denmark by force after weeks of posturing. This reversal of his combative rhetoric was a relief for political leaders in Europe but reinforced the idea they should treat Trump’s US with caution.
This need for caution is also prompting European countries to partner more effectively to boost the area’s energy independence. We saw impacts of this at the North Sea Summit on 26th January in Hamburg, where a series of deals were signed between politicians and the industry to promote offshore wind.
One agreement involved the leaders or energy ministers of nine countries – Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, the Republic of Ireland and the UK – signing the ‘Investment Pact for the North Seas’. This agreement is intended to unlock €1trn of investment in European offshore wind from 2031 to 2040.
This pact brought with it commitments from politicians and businesses. Governments have agreed to remove obstacles to the use of power purchase agreements in offshore wind, and implement policies to underpin 150GW of offshore wind projects to be built in northern European waters in the 2030s.
One way they plan to do this is with the commitment to use two-sided Contracts for Difference (CfDs) as the standard auction design, as are used in the UK including in the 8.4GW CfD offshore wind allocation round seven process that concluded last month.
Germany last week delayed a 2.5GW tender for its N-10.1 and N-10.2 sites in the North Sea, which it failed to auction in August 2025 and where it feared another failure in June 2026. The German government has now postponed offshore wind tenders in 2026 so it can redesign its tender process and introduce two-sided CfDs. The Netherlands is also looking to use CfDs and fast-track permitting to help it achieve a revised goal of 40GW offshore wind capacity in its waters by 2040, which it cut from a 50GW goal this week.
These moves should support the pact’s pledge to enable 150GW of offshore wind farms to be deployed in Europe in the 2030s – but the pressure is not only on policymakers.
At least 100 offshore wind companies signed the investment pact too. They committed to reduce the cost of offshore wind 30% by 2040 compared to 2025 levels, which would help make it more competitive with fossil fuels and other generation sources. They also pledged to invest €9.5bn in the offshore wind value chain in the 2030s, including ports, vessels and manufacturing facilities, which should mobilise €1trn of economic activity. Finally, they committed to create an additional 91,000 jobs over existing targets.
This pact has sparked optimism in the sector after a few challenging years. The rollout of offshore wind in Europe has slowed due to the impacts of inflation on overly ambitious business cases agreed in the early 2020s; supply chain constraints as the offshore wind sector grew globally in regions including Asia-Pacific and North America, although growth in those markets has now slowed; the risks to western wind turbine makers caused by Chinese rivals making inroads in Europe; and security threats both cyber and physical.
The ‘Investment Pact for the North Seas’ will not solve all these difficulties, but it should help to ensure politicians and business leaders work more closely to solve shared challenges. The need for greater collaboration in European offshore wind was in evidence in three other agreements on generation and transmission signed in Hamburg last week.
Heads of government including Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged greater cooperation on energy and infrastructure in the Hamburg Declaration. This included an agreement to roll out 100GW of cross-border offshore wind projects in northern Europe by 2050, with greater support for green hydrogen production capacity.
Separately, Europe’s offshore wind powerhouses the UK and Germany committed to deepen collaboration on offshore hybrid assets. This includes working on electricity interconnectors and other subsea infrastructure that could unlock investment deals.
And finally, transmission system operators pledged by the end of 2027 to identify 20GW of cross-border offshore wind projects that could be deployed in the seas of northern Europe, including the North Sea, in the 2030s.
These are set to include offshore wind farms built in one country’s waters but linked to the grids in one or more other nations; complexes combining offshore wind generation and interconnection; and cross-border projects built in the waters of more than one country. These projects require a great deal of cooperation, and transmission system operators are now tasked with developing cost-sharing principles that will help get the projects built. The goal is to establish an interconnected European offshore grid.
These agreements should help Europe to build on the 37GW of offshore wind currently in operation, which is mostly in the North Sea. The long-term goal is to reach 300GW of installed offshore wind in European waters by 2050.
Commitments like this should help to foster optimism at a time when countries and companies are seeking to regain momentum after a 2025 overshadowed by offshore wind tender failures in Europe. Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Lithuania and the Netherlands all had to delay or cancel tenders because of mismatches between what they were offering and the commercial realities for the industry.
But such agreements are only part of the fight. Europe’s offshore wind industry is fighting to regain lost momentum and cope with the commercial and political realities of how to thrive in a more fractious world order. The real test of the success of the North Sea Summit is how these agreements are implemented.
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