Strategic Development of North Sea Grid Infrastructure to Facilitate Least-Cost Decarbonisation

Offshore wind power is expected to make a significant contribution towards de-carbonising the European energy system. It is envisaged that today’s installed capacity levels of about 5 GW of offshore wind generation may reach 150GW by 2030, with approximately half of this capacity located in the North Seas. Given Europe’s goal of increased integration of the power markets by expanding cross-border interconnectors, there is a significant opportunity to integrate offshore wind generation and interconnector projects in the North Seas in order to take advantage of potentially significant economies of scale and thus reduce network costs