Norway Reopens Its First Floating Wind Tender

The Norwegian Ministry of Energy has invited applications for three floating wind sites within the Utsira Nord area. The deadline for submitting proposals is set for 15 September 2025.

The government is offering a project capacity of 500 MW at each site through the tendering process, which will be carried out in two stages: the allocation of project sites and the state aid, with a maturation phase in between.

In the first stage, the three sites will be allocated to the developers who score the highest in a competition based on qualitative criteria, including cost level and maturity, innovation and technology development, feasibility, sustainability, and positive ripple effects.

The competition for state aid will be conducted after a maturation phase. To participate, the bidder must have submitted a licence application and provided a bank guarantee for participation in the auction. The auction will only be conducted if at least two developers meet the requirements.

One developer per each site will be awarded state aid, and the winners will be those who requires the lowest amount of state support to realise their project. The funding is capped at NOK 35 billion (approximately EUR 3 billion) and will be provided as investment support.

The winner of the support competition will establish a project as close to 500 MW as possible, depending on the chosen turbine size. Participants who do not win the support competition will be able to apply to have the exclusive right to the project area extended, as per the rules in the Offshore Energy Act, according to the Ministry of Energy.

The Norwegian government first opened the tenders for both the fixed-bottom area Southern North Sea II and Utsira Nord in March 2023, and later postponed the processes to obtain the support model approval from the European Free Trade Association’s (EFTA) Surveillance Authority (ESA). For the Southern North Sea II tender, the government got the approval from the ESA in December 2023 and completed the tender last year, with the winner announced in March 2024.

The Utsira Nord tender was initially postponed until the first quarter of 2024 and was then further pushed back to this year.

This April, the Norwegian Ministry of Energy said that it notified ESA of the support model for floating wind projects at Utsira Nord, and that the tender for the area would be opened as soon as ESA has approved the model.