Denmark
The birthplace of offshore wind — but its flagship North Sea tender drew zero bids, exposing how far auction terms had drifted from economics.
Assessment
as of 2026-06-26Established. Denmark built the world's first offshore wind farm and runs a long-standing state-tender regime, but its operational fleet is modest in absolute GW next to the UK or Germany — it is a deep, experienced market rather than a high-volume one. Until 2023 it also ran a parallel "open-door" track where originating a site effectively conferred the right, closed after an EU state-aid challenge.
Stalled. The headline event is the December 2024 North Sea tender — a minimum of 3 GW across several sites, with bidders free to overplant above it — which received no bids at all, a striking failure that exposed how unattractive the terms (state co-ownership, no subsidy, downside risk) had become against a higher-cost environment. The operating fleet still grew — Thor, the largest Danish project yet, reached first power in March 2026 on guidance that never slipped — but the zero-bid round left no new large tranche contracted behind it.
Medium. Political commitment to offshore wind is genuine and the 2030 ambition is large, but the zero-bid tender and the EU-forced closure of open-door show that regulatory design and risk allocation — not political will — are the binding constraint. Re-tendering on revised terms is the key uncertainty.
Mixed. Denmark retains world-class expertise and a credible long-run ambition, but the immediate path depends on whether re-designed tenders clear. A successful re-tender would reset the trajectory; a second failure would make the 2030 target unreachable.
Strong political commitment, yet a failed tender and a forced end to the open-door scheme show regulatory-design and economic risk, not lack of will.
- Danish Energy Agency · 2024-12 · verified
- Danish Energy Agency · 2023 · moderate
State of the market
as of 2026-09-09Teal line = the Hafrok Expected Buildout (confidence-weighted): 11 GW of live pipeline weights to 5.7 GW expected to complete, timed by each project's COD distribution (mass beyond 2037 not drawn). Bands are the unweighted dated pipeline — the Expected Buildout also models on-hold and undated projects, so it can sit above them. 3.0 GW of pipeline has no dated COD and is not in the bands.
How this line is made
The Expected Buildout line answers one question: of the pipeline announced today, how much actually gets built, and when? It is not a scenario and not a target tracker — it is the database's live pipeline, passed through two filters measured from the industry's own delivery record.
Whether a project completes. Every project in development carries a completion weight, banded Delivering / Expected / Prospective / Fragile. A proposal — a site where no authority has yet granted rights — carries none and sits outside this line entirely; it is listed, not counted. The starting point is the historical completion rate of its lifecycle stage — of projects that reached construction, 97% delivered; financed but not yet building, 92%; consented without financing, 75%; early development, 61%; on hold, 15%. That base rate is then adjusted by what the project has actually secured (offtake, grid, consents, investment decision) and decays if a project sits quiet past its stage's normal dwell time.
When it delivers. Each project also carries a completion-date distribution — a shape, not a single year, right-skewed because offshore wind slips late far more often than it runs early. The peak sits on a rule-based expected date chained from the project's latest achieved milestone; the width of the late tail is fitted to how far past their announced dates real projects actually landed: builders slip tight (68% on time, n=158), financed projects tighter still (72%, n=101), consented-only projects carry the fat tail — 25% land three or more years late (n=133). A stated date faster than any comparable project has ever achieved is floored to the achievable window and flagged, never taken at face value.
The line is the sum, across every live project, of capacity × completion weight × the probability it delivers in each year. For projects already under construction, a share of expected capacity is counted at first power — turbines start generating before a wind farm is fully commissioned — so a market's chart can show capacity arriving a year before a project's stated completion date. Delivered history is metered fact; the line inherits every assumption above and nothing else.
Honest limits. The weights are calibrated on a fleet whose failures have so far been overwhelmingly pre-financing — completion rates after FID rest on a record with few failures, so they are ceilings, not guarantees. The slip fitted on consented projects is the loosest (the "three or more years late" bucket spans many years). Policy shocks arrive faster than base rates move — the weights see a stop-work order only as its lifecycle consequences accrue. And the line redistributes as the database learns: it is re-derived on every data refresh, not frozen.
Full per-project workings — each project's weight, band, expected date and distribution — are on its project page. Calibration v2.0-phase0 · generated 2026-09-09; every figure above is read from the generated calibration file, never typed.
Auction outlook
forecast · 2 rounds trackedLater phase of the redesigned programme; bid deadline October 2028 (firmed from "autumn 2028" by the 4 Aug 2026 award release: "budfrist i oktober 2028"); completion end-2034. CfD cap DKK 8.2bn.
Baltic energy island, 3 GW; DK-DE bilateral investment agreement 26 Jan 2026; commissioning mid-2030s. The wind-generation tender date is not officially fixed (project firmer than the tender date). NB the larger North Sea Energy Island (up to 10 GW) is POSTPONED (~2036).
Origination ladder
settled rounds → projects3 sites designated for forecast rounds (7 GW) are not in the history ladder — pre-tender zones are the auction outlook's rounds-in-waiting: Bornholm Energy Island · Nordsøen Syd · North Sea Energy Island.