The North Sea Grid Project, an initiative led by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and E3G together with partners in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK, aims to promote an integrated offshore grid. The long-term objective is to couple power markets, to enable installation of offshore and onshore renewables while strengthening the grid’s resilience and improving security of supply. In Germany, Ecologic Institute conducts a workshop series to identify stakeholder views with respect to an integrated offshore grid and related aspects of cross-border cooperation. The workshops discuss opportunities and challenges of an offshore grid against the background of the German energy transition.

Researchers have identified seven countries as being key for creating a North Seas Grid: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, and Norway. Expectations on the future volume of interconnections and offshore wind will shape decisions on market rules, grid configuration, and other outcomes. But while the discussion on a North Seas Grid has already started at the regional level, only few German stakeholders seem to have this high on their agenda.

In a series of four workshops, Ecologic Institute explores German perspectives on the idea of an offshore grid together with stakeholders from policy, civil society, business and research. The workshops aim to shed some light on the question under which conditions – if at all – the establishment an integrated offshore grid could find support among German stakeholder and which policy developments might advance the discussion on cross-border cooperation.