Industry Urges Dutch Gov’t to Secure Offshore Wind Buildout to 21 GW with CfDs, Industrial Electrification

June 2, 2025, by Adrijana Buljan

Offshore wind developers, suppliers, ports, and industry associations have called on the Dutch Minister of Climate Policy and Green Growth to safeguard the deployment of offshore wind capacity to reach 21 GW under the Netherlands’ roadmap by accelerating the electrification of Dutch industry and implementing two-sided Contracts for Difference (CfDs).

In a call-to-action pamphlet signed by 21 companies and organisations, the industry urged Minister Sophie Hermans to provide clarity as soon as possible about the remaining tender schedule of the 21 GW roadmap, following the government decision to postpone the tenders for the IJmuiden Ver Gamma offshore wind sites.

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The pamphlet signatories are: RWE, Vestas, Ørsted, Van Oord, Sif, Windunie, NedZero, Vattenfall, Fugro, Equinor, NMT-IRO, TKF, Siemens Gamesa, DOT, ParkWind, Ocean Winds, BP, Onze NoordzeeStroom, Ampelmann, Huisman, and Eneco.

“The recent postponement of the tenders for IJmuiden Ver Gamma highlights the challenging phase that the offshore wind industry is currently facing. Rising costs for constructing offshore wind farms and the slow pace of industrial electrification have resulted in significant, often unacceptable risks for the development of new offshore projects”, the companies and organisations said in a press release on 2 June.

“However, in order to guarantee the availability of adequate renewable energy in the future, the development of offshore wind cannot come to a halt.”

To ensure new offshore wind farms will continue to be built and the Dutch national target of 21 GW for 2032 reached, the 21-strong coalition is calling for the introduction of Contracts for Difference (CfDs) for offshore wind energy; and a concrete preparation of the SDE++ subsidy scheme as a fallback option for 2026 if CfDs remain unavailable.

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Two-sided CfDs are already in use in countries such as Belgium, the UK, Poland and France and have recently been introduced in Denmark. These contracts provide a guaranteed minimum price for electricity, protect developers’ revenues and provide financial benefits to the government when market prices exceed the CfD price. This system stabilises revenues for developers and reduces energy costs for consumers and industry through competitive tendering, the coalition emphasised.

Furthrmore, the delayed electrification and the resulting lagging demand for renewable electricity and grid congestion are causing increasing uncertainty about revenues. This has led to a gap between the costs and revenues of new offshore wind farms, the industry says.

In this regard, the pamphlet signatories are calling for stronger incentives for decarbonisation through the electrification of industry and compensation for grid tariffs.