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Global warming is taking the world by storm – and not in a figurative sense. As Europe and the U.K. face record-breaking heat waves and skyrocketed electricity prices, it’s clear that the continent is ready to take bigger actions to decrease dependency on fossil fuels and improve the quality of life for residents of the continent.
Both Europe and the United Kingdom have great leaps to implementing sustainability, such as the CSRD, European Sustainable Development Week, U.K. Environment Act, U.K. Hydrogen Strategy, and the Ten Point Plan respectively. Prior to Brexit, nine countries in Europe developed the North Seas Energy Cooperation – otherwise known as the NSEC.
👉 What is the NSEC, and how will it help countries in Europe propel themselves towards the clean energy economy many are seeking?
👉 The NSEC is an offshore grid that connects nine countries in Europe: including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. These European countries aim to increase the use of renewable energy and simultaneously promote economic growth.
Renewable energy is any energy that is derived from an infinite, natural source as opposed to finite sources of energy that pollute the atmosphere and provoke further global warming.
The main difference between renewable energy and nonrenewable energy, is that renewable energy is replenishable – as it is derived from abundant natural resources: like wind or the sun, more commonly known as wind or solar energy respectively.
The North Seas Energy Cooperation, NSEC for short, helps to support and encourage the creation of offshore grids given the large potential to source massive amounts of renewable energy in the North Seas region.
Therefore, the NSEC is a viable opportunity for countries in the EU seeking to achieve net-zero emissions and reduce their nation’s overall carbon footprint.
Many European countries place immense importance on the transition to the use of clean energy, and many programmes have already been implemented to ensure the European Union’s environmental progress.
For instance, the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan have pontificated the value of renewable energy derived from offshores like the North Seas region – and have conveyed the importance of regional collaboration to ensure future success. Basically, Europe believes that teamwork will get the job done – and they aren’t wrong.
Following a NSEC meeting on 4 December 2019, all countries a part of the NSEC including the European Commission confirmed a new, 3-year work programme to further implement the use of renewable energy from the offshore winds of the North Seas region.
👉 The new work programme scheduled for 2020-2023 emphasises on the creation of offshore wind and grid projects between borders – otherwise known as hybrid projects.
For instance, if there is an area that could provide an abundant amount of renewable energy, but rests between France and Belgium – the project will move forward despite the fact that cooperation from both countries could be necessary.
This new measure can also potentially help to reduce the costs and space required to create these offshore projects, while also ultimately sourcing more renewable energy in the end.
You may be wondering what is so special about the North Seas region optimal for harvesting wind energy – that’s because of its consistent wind patterns that make it one of the world’s most valuable offshore wind sources.
👉 The North Sea, which borders mostly the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and small parts of Germany, France, and Sweden – has exceptionally consistent, high wind speeds and shallow water, which allows for easy construction and installation of wind turbines and various offshore wind projects.
The North sea has already been providing Europe with oil and gas, which helped the continent to decrease their dependency on imported oil – ultimately creating new jobs that helped stimulate economic growth for the European Union.
However, the North Sea can do even more, by providing Europe with an abundant source of clean energy – enough to power up to 80% of Europe’s demand for electricity. Therefore, the use of offshore wind energy from the North Sea could calm future electricity shortages like the one the U.K. and the rest of Europe are facing now.
The North Sea can not only continue to create new jobs, but help reduce the need to use fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – ultimately helping the European Union accomplish their environmental goals.
How can the NSEC utilize the North Sea to accomplish their goals?
The NSEC has set many goals so that all of the European countries involved in the North Seas Energy Cooperation can work towards their various environmental goals.
Given hybrid offshore wind projects are a new goal to be implemented by the NSEC, a new framework has been required in order to adhere to all European countries involved in the NSEC.
Some crucial points for establishing hybrid offshore wind projects whilst keeping an E.U. frameworks in mind include determining how to administer the costs for funding the offshore grids and various renewable energy projects, how to divide the potential benefits between all participating European countries, and how to reward individual nations for their contributions to the European Union’s overall emissions targets with collaborative projects.
👉 Also, the NSEC must determine how funding can help encourage hybrid renewable energy projects, and strive to design a new electricity market for the E.U. so that these hybrid offshore and wind projects to harvest renewable energy can prove useful.
The NSEC has already set new goals for specific hybrid offshore wind projects, as the German presidency has already advocated to move forward with several projects that involve the participation of two member states simultaneously. For example, a collaborative project called the “North Sea Wind Power Hub” is a project between Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The NSEC will give projects like these further attention to ensure success and confirm that borders will not hinder the success of these hybrid projects. If borders are a foreseen issue, the project will be stopped to avoid wasting time, money, and resources.
The overarching goal of the NSEC is to cultivate peaceful and successful collaboration between all European countries involved in order to harvest an abundant amount of renewable energy from offshore wind. 💨
Harvesting wind energy from the North Sea isn’t just good for the environment, but could prove beneficial for Europe’s economy, too. Wind energy is known to be effective in improving socio-economic factors, as it can create new jobs and increase lucrative exports.
👉 In fact, one of the members of NSEC already utilizes wind energy to stimulate their economy – Denmark.
Denmark employed over 33,000 people through the wind industry, and created another 63,000 jobs in relevant industries as well. In fact, by 2020, 40% of offshore wind activities made up for wind companies’ turnover in Denmark.
The best part is, the need and desire for wind energy is growing even more, and with Denmark conveniently located on the coast of the North Sea – it means that these socio-economic benefits will only continue to grow.
If the Danish are doing so well with wind energy in regards to their economy, think of the benefits it could have for the rest of the European countries participating in the NSEC.
In fact, the U.K. is already thinking ahead to how the use of clean energy can stimulate jobs for their economy – such as is delineated in their recent Ten Point Plan, where two of the points refer to the use of renewable energy by sourcing more low-carbon hydrogen and nuclear power to decrease the need for fossil fuels and simultaneously create new jobs throughout the United Kingdom.
👉 Through the NSEC, the potential benefits of harvesting wind energy through hybrid offshore wind projects could help the economies of all European countries involved by improving their own potential exports and creating new jobs.
Following Brexit, the United Kingdom withdrew from the NSEC. The remaining members of the NSEC include France, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden. The European Commission is also a member of the NSEC.
Despite the U.K.’s departure from both the European Union and the North Seas Energy Cooperation – both the E.U. and the U.K. have agreed to allow the U.K. to establish a new collaboration with the NSEC.
In other words, the U.K. will still be able to participate in the NSEC even though they are no longer a part of the European Union.
⚠️ Given the severity of rising electricity prices and the need for the world to decrease their dependency on fossil fuels as soon as possible – The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is supportive of this new collaboration with the U.K. and is committed to make it work immediately.
It has been clear from the beginning that the utilization of renewable offshore wind energy could help the European Union, alongside individual countries part of the NSEC, achieve their emission reduction goals and even help them reach climate-neutrality by 2050.
While the NSEC is still relatively new, it has already made some progress in developing offshore wind projects – such as the project previously mentioned between Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands called, “North Sea Wind Power Hub”.
In fact, within months of establishing the NSEC, the Energy Ministers part of the North Seas Energy Cooperation announced new, ambitious goals to increase the amount of harvested renewable energy from these future offshore wind projects.
The ministers of the NSEC agreed to create targets for these offshore renewable energy projects.
👉 The nine European countries participating in the NSEC have confirmed their goal to accumulate a minimum of 260 gigawatts of energy from offshore wind projects by 2050 – ultimately representing a whopping 85% of the European Union’s overarching goal to acquire 300 gigawatts of energy by 2050.
The NSEC is well aware of the diligence required on behalf of all participating countries to achieve this monumental goal. Is there anything the NSEC can do to make sure they meet their renewable energy goals?
There’s always room for improvement, but the truth is – the NSEC hasn’t shown any major potential flaws yet. While it could prove difficult to divide the benefits of the harvest wind energy amongst all of the European countries participating in NSEC, the North Seas Energy Cooperation strives for equal achievement throughout all hybrid offshore projects.
If the NSEC continues down the path there on, they could prove how much time everyone else is wasting on fossil fuels that are polluting the planet.
The NSEC could be the start of something big in clean energy and Europe, but for now – it’s safe to say that their accomplishments so far are worthy of our admiration.
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