Felix Jakob Fliegner
Europe’s energy transition highlights the growing importance of offshore wind power, with expansion targets reaching nearly 500 GW by 2050. Geopolitical developments, however, pose risks to offshore infrastructure and raise concerns about the reliability of material imports. This study explores supply chain challenges in meeting these ambitions and the need for infrastructure redundancy at sea. A spatial planning analysis using a geographical information system assesses future manufacturing and raw material demand while discussing resilience strategies. The scope includes both generation and transmission assets of the future offshore grid. Results show that raw material supply is a key bottleneck for wind turbines, while converters and platforms face manufacturing and logistics constraints. Although material demand will rise, the trend is not unprecedented compared to the historic material demand in the offshore oil and gas sector. Redundancy in transmission corridor designation further increases material needs, which can be mitigated through circularity or overplanting. Mapping existing and planned supply chain sites in Europe reveals strong domestic capabilities, though reliance on imports is expected to grow. A balanced approach between domestic and foreign sources will be essential to support the energy transition. • Transformation of latest political offshore wind power ambitions into concrete wind farm locations and cable transmission corridors with help of a geographical information system to improve accuracy of supply chain demand estimates. • Expanding the scope of existing work through a derivation of supply chain demand for offshore wind farms and transmission assets in terms of manufacturing capacities and raw materials. • Manufacturing will need to scale 2–3 times today’s levels and raw material supply by a factor of 5–9, yet the total volume for 2050 is not unmatched by historical comparison to the oil and gas sector. • Supply chain demand is sensitive to assumptions with regard to higher resilience of offshore topologies (exacerbating effect) or overplanting strategies (alleviating effect).