While BDEW and AquaVentus generally welcome the cabinet decision to implement the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), as it aims to accelerate the expansion of renewable energies and simplify planning and approval procedures, both organisations are critical of the amendments to the German Offshore Wind Energy Act (Windenergie-auf-See-Gesetz).
“Unfortunately, the acceleration measures for the offshore hydrogen sector and the classification of such facilities as being of overriding public interest have been removed from the draft compared to last year’s legislative proposal,” criticises Kerstin Andreae, Chair of the BDEW Executive Board. “Yet these measures are particularly important to efficiently advance the hydrogen ramp-up in Germany. That is why we are calling for this point to be reinstated.”
The AquaVentus initiative is making the same demand and emphasises once again that combined connection concepts using subsea cables and pipelines for exporting wind power and H2 to shore must be made possible, as stipulated in the coalition agreement.
In response to a query from H2international, Robert Seehawer, Managing Director of the Förderverein, also added that the Offshore Wind Energy Act requires significant revision “to prevent a repeat of the outcomes of the wind auction for areas N-10.1 and N-10.2 on August 1, 2025. The current auction design is too rigid and inflexible.”
Given that Germany aims to install one gigawatt of offshore electrolysis capacity by 2030, according to the updated National Hydrogen Strategy, it is high time “to consider offshore hydrogen as a central component of a resilient, integrated and cost-efficient energy system of the future.”
The German federal government must now establish the regulatory framework “to integrate this key technology into the market ramp-up – in a technology-neutral, economically viable and future-proof manner,” says Seehawer.
In 2024, 4.5 TWh of offshore wind energy were curtailed. Hydrogen produced from curtailed wind turbines would give value back to this otherwise lost energy.
