German offshore wind faces gridlock as TotalEnergies eyes site returns

Germany's offshore wind sector is under acute pressure. The national wind industry association is seeking a formal mechanism allowing developers to hand back up to 16GW of awarded offshore sites, according to Recharge News. The driver is grid connection gridlock: transmission infrastructure is not being built fast enough to absorb the capacity that regulators have already auctioned.

The request comes alongside a separate report, also from Recharge News, that TotalEnergies is looking to return large German offshore site allocations. No capacity figure for the TotalEnergies holdings was given in the available reporting, but the company holds some of Germany's largest awarded offshore blocks. That a major integrated developer is reportedly walking away reinforces the industry body's argument that the current pipeline is not deliverable under present grid conditions.

The 16GW figure is material in context. Germany's offshore wind target stands at 30GW by 2030 and 70GW by 2045. A systemic return of awarded capacity at anything near that scale would force a reassessment of both auction design and transmission planning timelines at the Bundesnetzagentur.

Elsewhere in European wind, Vattenfall inaugurated its 139MW Bruzaholm onshore project in Sweden on 20 May, and RWE broke ground on a new Italian onshore wind farm on 21 May, per Renews.biz. These are incremental additions against a backdrop where Germany's offshore bottleneck is the dominant near-term risk to regional capacity delivery.