Germany offshore wind auction drew 0 bids, then new rules followed
Germany offshore wind auction system, the process the country uses to award development rights, failed its own test in August 2025. A tender for the 2.5 gigawatt N10.1 and N10.2 North Sea sites drew 0 bids, the first offshore wind auction round in Germany with no bidders at all. The government postponed the next auction round to 2027. On September 2, 2026, the Federal Cabinet, Germany top group of ministers, approved a draft amendment to the Wind Energy at Sea Act, WindSeeG, that changes the auction mechanism itself rather than simply repeating it.
Proposed range for total offshore wind tenders held each year under the draft amendment, not the size of a single tender area.
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| New annual tender volume | 2,000 to 4,800 megawatts a year |
The draft replaces a single price auction with a 2 stage design. The 2nd stage is a contract for difference, a mechanism that pays a wind project the gap between an agreed price and the market price of power when the market price is lower, then claws back the difference when the market price is higher. The government would only use that price protection if the first, unprotected stage draws no bidder willing to build without it. Under the draft, Germany would hold offshore wind tenders of 2,000 to 4,800 megawatts a year.
The industry group that would use these rules does not simply welcome them
The German Offshore Wind Energy Association, BWO, represents the developers and operators the new rules would apply to. BWO welcomes shrinking the typical single tender area from 2,000 megawatts to 1,000 to 1,200 megawatts and extending the standard operating period for a wind farm from 25 to 35 years. But BWO rejects the central design choice in the draft, that the contract for difference only appears as a fallback rather than as the default for every award, a distinction visible only in BWO own releases and easy for a generic summary to flatten into industry welcomes reform.
With the CfD, the draft takes an important step in the right direction.
Stefan Thimm, managing director of the German Offshore Wind Energy Association, BWO. Source 1.
Thimm warns that leaving developers unprotected in the first stage risks stalling the very projects the reform is meant to speed up.
When billion-dollar projects remain in limbo for years and are ultimately not built, we lose valuable time.
Stefan Thimm, managing director of the German Offshore Wind Energy Association, BWO. Source 1.
BWO says indexing the price could save billions
The draft also orders a review of whether the contract for difference strike price should rise or fall with cost changes between the day a project wins a tender and the day it starts producing power, a change called indexing. BWO calls that review mandate an important step, though it wants indexing written into the law now rather than only studied.
The fact that the German government is now explicitly examining indexation is an important signal.
Stefan Thimm, managing director of the German Offshore Wind Energy Association, BWO. Source 2.
BWO commissioned the consulting firm Frontier Economics to estimate what indexing would be worth to developers. That analysis, paid for by BWO, found indexing could save around 2 billion euros across the 4 gigawatts planned for tender in 2027, rising to up to 4.4 billion euros across the 9 gigawatts planned by 2030, about double the 2027 figure, a comparison made here from BWO 2 reported figures. The analysis also found indexing could lower the lifetime cost of the electricity a wind farm produces by 2.2 to 4.3 euros per megawatt hour.
Estimate from a Frontier Economics analysis BWO commissioned of what indexing the contract for difference strike price would save developers, not an independent finding.
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| Saving by 2027 | 2 |
| Saving by 2030 | 4.4 |
Germany still has a gap between its target and what industry expects
Germany has 9.7 gigawatts of offshore wind installed today across 1,680 turbines, producing 6.2% of the net power generated in the country and 26.1 terawatt hours of electricity in 2025. The government target for 2030 is 30 gigawatts, but industry only expects around 20 gigawatts to actually be built by then, a 10 gigawatt gap between the goal and what is likely to get built. Germany also has waypoints of 40 gigawatts by 2035 and 70 gigawatts by 2045.
The 2045 figure of 70 gigawatts is also stated independently by source 4. The 2030 figure is what industry actually expects to be built, not the government target of 30 gigawatts.
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| Installed today | 9.7 |
| Industry estimate by 2030 | 20 |
| Waypoint 2035 | 40 |
| Target 2045 | 70 |