Germany
Europe's biggest Continental market has hit an auction wall — a zero-bid central round, a collapsed dynamic round, and a 2026 calendar suspended while the mechanism is redesigned.
Assessment
as of 2026-06-26Mature. Germany has a substantial operational fleet across the North Sea and Baltic and a statutory, centralised regime under the WindSeeG: the state (BSH) pre-investigates and designates sites, then auctions them. It is the largest Continental market and a reference case for the "integrated" model where the site and its route to market are awarded together.
Stalled. WindSeeG sets statutory minimums — 30 GW by 2030, 40 GW by 2035 and 70 GW by 2045 — but the auction engine has seized: the 2025 centrally pre-investigated round received no bids at all, the 2025 dynamic round cleared 1,000 MW against 7,000 MW two years earlier, and the 2026 auctions were suspended to 2027 while the mechanism is reworked. The 2023 move to uncapped "negative bidding" (developers paying for the seabed) cleared record sums, then stopped clearing at all once economics tightened — the outcome the industry's warnings pointed at.
Medium. Targets are written into law and political consensus on offshore wind is broad, but the contested questions — auction design and grid-expansion pace — are no longer abstract: the mechanism redesign now gates the calendar, and delivery against the statutory dates depends on how it lands.
Mixed. Germany remains a core pillar of the European pipeline on paper, and nothing suggests the statutory targets will be abandoned — but near-term volumes depend on the reworked auction design actually clearing when the calendar resumes in 2027, and on offshore grid connections keeping pace. The targets stand; the path to them is being redrawn.
Statutory targets and a centralised regime stand; the binding risk is auction economics — the 2025 central round drew no bids and the 2026 rounds are suspended to 2027 — not political will.
- BNetzA · 2025 · verified
- Bundesregierung · 2023 · verified
- BSH · 2026 · moderate
State of the market
as of 2026-09-09Teal line = the Hafrok Expected Buildout (confidence-weighted): 24 GW of live pipeline weights to 14 GW expected to complete, timed by each project's COD distribution (mass beyond 2046 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 · 1 round trackedAll 2026 auctions suspended to 2027 (FEP amendment 30 Jan 2026) after the 1 Aug 2025 central round (N-10.1/N-10.2) drew ZERO bids. 2027 cluster = N-10.1, N-10.2, N-12.4, N-12.5, N-13.1, N-13.2; only N-10.1 (~2,000 MW) + N-10.2 (~500 MW) volume is officially solid. No firm Gebotstermin yet. the mechanism reform is still in flux — the adopted WindSeeG amendment did NOT add CfDs for centrally pre-examined areas (instead a "second bid component"/entry fee for zero-subsidy bids), but the Bundesrat (June 2026) is pressing for a fresh Offshore Wind Energy Act amendment before the summer recess to int […]
Origination ladder
settled rounds → projects2 sites designated for forecast rounds (2.5 GW) are not in the history ladder — pre-tender zones are the auction outlook's rounds-in-waiting: N-10.1 · N-10.2.