Europe needs to build energy islands

By Ludwig Siegele

“Oblivion”, a film starring Tom Cruise and released in 2013, was quickly relegated to the fate of its title. Still, it was memorable for one thing: gigantic contraptions of alien origin called “hydro-rigs”. They hovered over the Earth’s oceans and sucked up water. Europe’s ambitious plans to build an archipelago of artificial “energy islands” in the North and Baltic seas evoke a similar sci-fi vibe. Some will be huge, the size of dozens of football fields, designed to collect the power generated by hundreds of surrounding wind turbines. In March 2024 Elia, a Belgian power-grid operator, will start building the first one 45km off the country’s coast. But does Europe require such pharaonic projects?

You need not be an engineer to see the benefit of such islands. Today each offshore wind farm has its own cable connecting it to the grid on land. But as Europe gears up to produce 300 gigawatts (GW) from its northern seas by 2050—enough to power all of the continent’s homes—this method will become increasingly inefficient. It is much cheaper first to gather the electricity from several wind farms offshore and then send it onshore through one large cable. Energy islands could also feed power to multiple countries based on demand.