The Netherlands has committed to 21 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 70 gigawatts by 2050 without government subsidy.

 

"The Netherlands built its modern economy on windmills. Five centuries later, it is doing it again — this time with turbines the size of skyscrapers.

The Dutch relationship with wind energy is not metaphorical. Windmills drained the polders, milled the grain, and powered the workshops of the Golden Age. The country's very existence — a third of its land below sea level — was made possible by wind-powered water management. Wind technology is as Dutch as tulips and canals.

The modern iteration is offshore. The Netherlands has committed to 21 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 70 gigawatts by 2050 — a trajectory that would make offshore wind the country's dominant electricity source within a generation. The North Sea, shallow and windy, is the ideal site. Dutch offshore wind projects are already among the most cost-competitive in the world.

Hollandse Kust Noord, completed in 2023, was the world's first offshore wind farm built without government subsidy — developed purely on merchant risk by Vattenfall, which bid zero subsidy in the tender. The economics of offshore wind in Dutch waters have reached the point where developers are confident enough to proceed without guaranteed prices.

The Netherlands is also pioneering the combination of offshore wind with green hydrogen production — co-locating electrolysers at sea to convert wind electricity directly to hydrogen, avoiding the need to bring all the power ashore as electricity.

The same sea that once threatened to swallow the Netherlands is now the source of its energy future.

Source: Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), 2023

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