Recommendations

within a cooperative scenario due to reduced learning effects, too slow development of the supply chain and lacking exploitation of economies of scale. Ensuring that national support mechanisms are open to offshore wind power should therefore be a priority.

As offshore wind power will often have high network connection costs, even shallow connection charging regimes is one possible source of distortion. Examples include varying practices when it comes to connection charges and G-tariffs. In the current models, only a few countries (Sweden, Finland and to a smaller extent Denmark) apply G tariffs. We also note that there are substantial differences with respect to connection charging, where Denmark (historically) and Germany stand out with practically full socialisation of offshore wind network costs. Greater alignment of connection charging regimes should therefore be addressed.

Experience suggests that the common principles for the establishment of offshore wind power infrastructure, including offshore hubs, are not fully developed. Coordination of multiple stakeholders, including TSOs and offshore wind developers, from several countries, has proved to be lengthy and costly processes for the cases that exist, e.g. the Kriegers Flak project and experiences from the North Sea region. Common principles and framework guidelines could greatly reduce transaction costs and uncertainty for developers as well as for involved TSOs.

The key economic coordination issues are multinational support mechanisms for offshore wind power and mechanisms for financing of joint network investments.

Existing support mechanisms tend to exclude multinational projects. Utilising flexible mechanisms in the RES directive is an obvious option to facilitate coordination (joint projects and joint support mechanisms are particularly relevant), However, the flexible mechanisms have not been widely used so far, hence, there is a lack of experience when it comes to the design and practical implementation of these mechanisms.

The coordination challenge is most pronounced when it comes to the development of offshore infrastructure projects, in particular offshore hubs, although in principle the challenges apply to any grid investment related to offshore wind power displaying cross-border benefits and costs.

We have seen that coordinated development is likely to have asymmetric consequences for onshore grid development and associated costs among the BEMIP countries. Today, however, no specific regulatory regime exists for advanced offshore hubs or other grid investments regionally, and even if such a framework would exist, its integration with national regulatory regimes is not straightforward.

In order to incentivise TSOs to make investments according to the “common good”, i.e. the vision for the efficient regional utilisation of offshore wind power in the Baltic Sea region, they also need to be compensated for the additional costs that arise from jointly beneficial investments that are not beneficial for an individual TSO. The same thinking would apply to general development of interconnectors in the region.

Developing guidelines and standard contractual arrangements for fair regional cost allocation would offset or balance out the asymmetric distribution of costs and benefits and could build on regional assessments of grid impacts. While this would be a task that would require considerable commitment of administrative capacity and coordination at the beginning of cooperation on regional development, it is not without precedent and such efforts could to some

extent build on principles developed for common cost and benefit analysis and capacity adequacy assessments by ENTSO-E.

Another measure for promoting efficient allocation of offshore wind farms could be the introduction of a common financing mechanism. Cooperation mechanisms in the RES directive are relevant in this context. Also, a regional fund with monetary contributions from participating Member States could be established to boost the development in the region. Coordination with the EU PCI framework could be an option, as well as the Connecting Europe Facility allocation

for cross-border renewable energy projects.

9 Task 5 – Identification of and recommendations to address market, planning and permitting barriers

Key Messages from the Results

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There are three main barriers related to planning and permitting in the region: poor and/or fragmented geospatial data; complex, extended or ineffective licensing regimes; and insufficient regional grid planning that considers the future needs of offshore wind capacity.

The first two of these problems are not uniformly present in every BEMIP member state, as some of the BEMIP countries have made considerable efforts to establish an efficient licensing framework for offshore wind projects. However, these barriers are sufficiently prevalent to hamper offshore wind in the region as a whole.

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Good geospatial data is essential for effective maritime spatial planning and for enabling informed decision-making by commercial developers of offshore wind farms.

Unfortunately, data issues are present in many BEMIP states. As a first step to support better data gathering and sharing in the region, we recommend that the Working Group initiate cooperation among the appropriate regional maritime data/planning agencies to develop a data management model. This would establish a common standard for data structures, formats and access arrangements that would both help countries to identify possible gaps in their domestic arrangements and form the foundation for more effective cross-border planning.

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The quality of licensing procedures varies markedly across the region. Some regimes are likely to present barriers to offshore wind development owing to: the absence of clear processes, the inability to identify stakeholder objections early, and/or the existence of inappropriately long or repetitive appeals procedures. Knowledge sharing on best practices could act as a useful guide for those BEMIP member states seeking to improve their own national licensing systems.

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While there is significant regional cooperation on environmental and spatial planning issues, TSO-level cooperation is split among different groups that handle network planning within ENTSO-E and the three Regional Security Coordinators active in the region.

Existing cooperation is in any case not focused on the future needs of offshore wind. More use could be made of existing cooperation mechanisms to support the identification of those grid network investments that are needed to enable renewable investments in general, and offshore wind deployment in particular.

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In the longer term, joint financing mechanisms for cross-border grid infrastructure and

operational cooperation via the relevant Regional Security Coordinators could also be considered, to enable TSO collaboration on investments in addition to planning.

Furthermore, the processes on identifying candidates for joint financing of cross-border offshore wind power projects under the Connecting Europe Facility and network planning could be coordinated.

The purpose of this task is to:

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Describe the current authorisation and permitting regimes for offshore wind and transmission investments in the BEMIP member states,

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Identify barriers related to planning, authorisation and permitting for offshore wind and transmission investments, including maritime spatial planning, and

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Evaluate and make recommendations on options for reducing the barriers identified, both through national measures and cross-border coordination.

The work under Task 5 has consisted mainly of a review of the existing literature and public documentation. We have also carried out our own analysis to establish a set of criteria for a suitable planning and authorisation regime, which we have compared with our findings on the national and regional systems in place.

The main deliverable with respect to the description of current authorisation and permitting regimes is attached in the form of country factsheets (see Appendix E). There is also a factsheet on relevant EU regulation. We refer to these factsheets for further details.

In document Study on Baltic offshore wind energy cooperation under BEMIP (Sider 134-138)