An offshore wind union? Diversity and convergence in European offshore wind governance

PublishedThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is freely available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.Offshore wind megaprojects in European waters have significant carbon abatement potential and increasing their number is a policy goal for several European maritime nations. But experience has shown that governance of large-scale, commercial offshore wind development is not straightforward. It is found that in five EU member states, policy innovation intended to enable investment in offshore wind projects is leading to a convergence upon a distinctive European model of offshore wind governance. The European Union appears to play numerous roles in this process and further research into how offshore wind policy innovation propagates in the EU is warranted.I thank Bridget Woodman for her constructive review of several earlier versions of this article and four anonymous reviewers whose welcome comments improved the article. I am also grateful for the input of Bob Rumes of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Gustaaf Vanbavinckhove of the Belgian Federal Public Service for Economy, SMEs, Self-Employed and Energy, Peter Sehestedt of the Danish Energy Agency, Simone van Leusen and colleagues of the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency and Hanna Schumacher of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. I also thank Dave Williams, Fliss Jones, Joe Phillips and Paul Reynolds for numerous discussions of the ideas on which this article is based. Finally I thank four anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper