Offshore wind farms: This is how much expansion is planned in the North and Baltic Seas
There is no question that there is no way around renewable energy. One solution is wind turbines, which generate electricity with a high degree of reliability, particularly off the coast. It was recently announced that a huge wind farm is to be built off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Germany also has ambitious plans.
Back in August 2022, the representatives of several countries bordering the Baltic Sea announced in Copenhagen that they would increase the production of wind energy in the Baltic Sea by no less than seven times to 20 gigawatts by 2030. "This," said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, "would be enough to supply 20 million households with electricity. This is more than the current offshore wind capacity in the entire European Union. There are no less ambitious wind farm plans for the North Sea, which are to be realised in the short and medium term.
Existing wind farms are only a serious obstacle in individual cases
Critics continue to criticise the lack of infrastructure on land to transport the electricity generated at sea to where it is needed. Animal and environmental conservationists are concerned about the welfare of fish and birds. And the tourism industry fears for the attractiveness of some coastal resorts if huge windmills suddenly spoil the view out to sea. But don't kid yourself, the expansion of wind energy is important and unstoppable.
Not least us sailors will have to come to terms with this. A good ten years ago, the former president of the Association of Sea and Harbour Pilots, Gerald Immens, pointed out in YACHT that things were getting "pretty tight at sea". At the time, some people dismissed this as scaremongering. And in fact, the vast majority of crews whose home territory is the North Sea or Baltic Sea only perceive the existing wind farms as a seriously disruptive obstacle in isolated cases: for example, on the way past the Danish islands to southern Sweden. Or coming from Rügen or the coast over to Bornholm. But these are exceptions. On the one hand, because most of the bicycles are travelling far out at sea and are therefore far from coastal waters. Above all, however, because their numbers to date are still quite manageable.
Only a few offshore wind farms in Germany and Denmark so far
There are currently just over 30 wind farms in waters belonging to Germany: two dozen in the North Sea, the others in the Baltic Sea. And there again exclusively off the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, more precisely north of the Darß and north of Rügen. Between Flensburg and Rostock, on the other hand, sailors also come across some quite extensive areas that are sometimes or permanently off-limits. However, these are not wind farms, but the large training firing ranges of the navy.
The picture is very similar in Denmark and Sweden. Only a few scattered and mostly smaller wind farms can be found in Belten and Sund or in the Kattegat and Skagerrak or off Sweden's east coast. There are even fewer on the North Sea coast of Denmark.
As a result, the areas covered by wind turbines appear correspondingly modest on the relevant nautical charts. However, if you now include all the areas that are also to be equipped with wind farms and the associated infrastructure such as transformer and storage stations in the coming years, it becomes clear that free sailing will soon be a thing of the past in many areas of the North Sea and Baltic Sea that are popular with local sailors. The maps at the top of the picture gallery illustrate this impressively. They show which wind farms are already in operation, where construction is underway and which areas could also be equipped with wind turbines in the future.
The areas designated off the Danish North Sea coast are particularly eye-catching. These are vast areas on which not only wind turbines but also artificial islands are to be built in order to equip them with huge electricity storage facilities. As a buffer, so to speak, for surplus energy that will only be needed later. In a few years, a trip from Heligoland around Skagen will inevitably lead right through the middle, along the passages left free for shipping.
The Netherlands and Great Britain are wind power pioneers
Anyone who has ever sailed from Germany along the Dutch coast across to England may have an idea of what awaits us in this respect in this country too. The wind turbines are lined up close together, especially off the west coast of the island. You can hardly get past many of them if you don't want to take a long diversions. The good news is that in the UK, travelling through wind farms is generally permitted. Restricted zones only exist within a radius of 50 metres around the individual wind turbines. And only in a few exceptional cases are there prescribed corridors through the fields from which you are not allowed to deviate.
However, the regulations in Germany and its neighbouring countries are completely different. Currently, each country has a very different approach - both in the awarding and planning of wind farms and in the regulations for safe navigation in and around offshore facilities. Even within Germany, there are no standardised solutions. Although these were supposed to have been introduced several years ago, chaos still prevails. We have summarised the most important information on the navigation rules in a separate article.
However, even if it is permitted to sail through the centre of the wind turbines, sailors still have to ask themselves how dangerous this is under certain circumstances. To date, there has been no known case of a yacht colliding with such a turbine. However, with the foreseeable huge increase in the number of wind turbines, the associated risk of accidents is also increasing.
The wind is not affected by the wind turbines
There is one thing, however, that sailors can safely ignore: There are no downdrafts or dangerous downdrafts, unpredictable wind shifts or turbulent currents on the water surface caused by the rotating rotor blades in the wind farms. The reason for this is quite simple: the individual turbines themselves are positioned at such a large distance from each other that they do not influence each other. However, a wind turbine alone cannot change the prevailing wind conditions to such an extent that a sailing yacht would have problems.
If corridors must be maintained in a park, caution is again required. This is because everyone uses them, possibly even commercial shipping, which would otherwise be left out. It can get crowded. And there is usually no traffic separation for the respective directions of travel.
Long-term effects of the massive expansion of wind energy on global weather systems have not been confirmed, in contrast to small changes in the local microclimate due to air mixing. On the one hand, offshore wind farms extract energy from the atmosphere in order to generate electricity; on the other hand, this is also returned to the atmosphere as waste heat at the end of the chain. This creates a cycle that does not exist in this form with fossil energy generation. This is another reason why the advantages of renewable energy generation from wind certainly outweigh the disadvantages for the climate.
Finally, another positive aspect: as a skipper, you can gain something good from the wind farms. Back in 2014, an expert from the Waterways and Shipping Directorate gave the tip in a YACHT interview that the wheels, which can be seen from afar, are perfect direction markers for terrestrial navigation. After all, each one is precisely marked on the nautical chart.
