Guidelines for planning offshore renewable energy in the Baltic Sea

Due to the global climate crisis, the pressure to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption and to expand renewable energy capacity across the European Union (EU) has increased, following international and EU climate targets. On top of this, the urgent need to become energy-independent has moved the energy transition to a high priority level in Europe.

The European Commission’s REPowerEU Plan accompanied by the proposal for the amendment of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), is an effort to accelerate the processes for deployment and installation of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) across the EU to become independent from third-country’s fossil fuels and meet global climate goals. To achieve this, the Plan suggests a “massive speedup and scale-up in renewable energy” increasing the target of the EU energy share from renewable sources, where the European Council has reached a provisional political agreement “to raise the share of renewable energy in the EU’s overall energy consumption to 42.5% by 2030 with an additional 2.5% in indicative top up that would allow it to reach 45%”.

To help bend the curve on climate change and biodiversity loss, we believe offshore renewable energy should be developed in line with principles of environmental and nature protection – we want offshore renewable energy with nature in mind! The WWF Baltic Sea Programme and Coalition Clean Baltic have developed guidelines in a joint effort to inspire the discussion in Baltic Member States and provide criteria for the identification and designation of offshore renewable energy (ORE) and for the deployment and installation of ORE technology. With these guidelines we hope to inform the discussion on, and planning of, the much-needed expansion of offshore renewable energy.