Rising costs and shadowing blamed as Germany offshore wind auction attracts no bids for first time

There were no bids in Germany’s latest auction for offshore wind, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) announced. Energy industry association BDE said this was a first for the country.

“The first-ever absence of bids in an offshore wind tender round and the already sharply declining interest in the June 2025 tender show that the risks for offshore wind farm developers have increased significantly in recent years,” BDEW head Kerstin Andreae said.

Reasons for this included increased project and capital costs as a result of geopolitical tensions and supply chain bottlenecks, as well as increasingly difficult-to-predict price and volume risks in the electricity market.

Andreae said that current plans would put wind turbines in too close proximity of each other, so that the output would be significantly reduced due to shadowing effects – an additional reason for the declining interest among companies. She called for regulatory reforms, including changes to the auction design.

Germany has made offshore wind power a key pillar of its plans for an almost fully renewable electricity supply.

Industry said at the start of the year that Germany is likely to reach its target of having a total offshore wind electricity capacity of 30 gigawatt (GW) in 2031, one year later than planned.

The number of Germany’s offshore wind turbines connected to the grid remained stuckat 1,639 in the first half of 2025, and the industry has called for changes in the auction system. In recent years, there have been several zero-state-support bids in German offshore wind auctions.

Clean Energy Wire. Reproduced with permission.