The European Commission has launched a public consultation on its future offshore renewable energy strategy that is key to its 2030 and 2050 climate ambitions.
The strategy will be a crucial part of the European Green Deal, which aims at turning Europe into the first net-zero carbon continent by 2050, and the Next Generation EU recovery package to overcome the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“To achieve climate neutrality by 2050, we need to increase the EU’s offshore energy production twenty times,” said the EU Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson.
“This means making it easier to build large-scale offshore wind parks in an environmentally sustainable way. We must also use the potential of other renewable sources such as offshore solar energy as well as new opportunities of tidal and ocean energy.”
The commission earlier this year had estimated that between 240 and 450 GW of offshore wind power is needed in Europe by 2050 to keep temperature rises below 1.5°C.
The public consultation on offshore renewables will run until 24 September. The European Commission last week also launched a roadmap for the offshore renewables strategy that will be open for feedback until August 13, 2020.
The commission plans to publish its offshore renewable energy strategy by year-end as part of the European Green Deal.
