New figures from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) revealed a total of 3,019MW of new offshore wind capacity came online in 2015, which means that offshore wind investments in Europe doubled to a record €13.3 billion (£10bn) last year. That brings the total capacity to more than 11GW.

Germany (2282MW), the UK (556MW) and the Netherlands (180MW) were the three countries to grid-connect new offshore wind turbines in 2015 with 14 projects reaching completion.

Work is ongoing on a further six projects in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, which will contribute an additional 1.9GW in capacity, EWEA said.The average turbine size rose to 4.2MW from 3.7MW the previous year.

EWEA chief executive officer Giles Dickson commented the figures:

“New capacity additions will be lower in 2016 than 2015 though should then rebound, and we can expect to have over 20GW offshore wind in Europe by 2020.” Then he added:

“The real question is what happens after 2020. The industry is making real progress in reducing costs but we need governments to give us a clear vision of the volumes they envisage long term and the regulatory framework they’ll apply to drive the necessary investments. Active collaboration between governments is also key to align their efforts to develop the sector in the North Sea and Baltic.”