A group Danish onshore developers including European Energy and Eurowind are set to make an official complaint to the European Commission and potentially appeal at the European Court of Justice against the upcoming 3GW Danish offshore wind tender.
It is understood that the objection will be made immediately after an approval of the tender rules by the Commission. This is expected in early December.
A person close to one of the developers said that the offshore CfD being planned creates an uneven playing field between offshore, onshore and solar developers. It also has notable “design errors”.
Most notably the developers claim, the CfD grants state aid for production during periods of negative prices. This, the group claims, does not comply with the EU’s Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework.
It noted three separate errors, according to correspondence seen by reNEWS.
“Two of these errors entail that production during negative price hours does, in fact, trigger the granting of additional aid. The last one actively incentivises the aid beneficiaries to produce during negative price hours. This greatly increases the incentives for the operator(s) of the North Sea parks and the Hesselø park to offer the large production volumes from their subsidised parks on the commercial electricity markets even at negative prices.”
As such this will “undermine the economic viability of any operator on the energy markets and derail the development of unsubsidised renewable energy production”, according to the letter.
“It will have huge consequences on an energy market which has had no subsidies for the last six years. We want a solution which takes a technological neutral approach so an auction which gets the lowest price for green electrons no matter is it is onshore, offshore or solar,” a source added.
The group, which has already sent three informal letters of complaint to the Commission, said that if it decides to approve the CfD scheme, then developers are prepared to appeal to the European Court of Justice.
An industry analyst who is also concerned about the impact on onshore developers added: “Onshore and solar developers are already nervous about their pipelines. Now they have 3GW of subsidised offshore wind coming to the market which there isn’t the demand for. Onshore projects won’t be bankable with subsidised offshore and PPAs will also be off the table.”
The new offshore wind farm tender will have a total support ceiling of €7bn (DKK55.2bn) across three sites – the 800MW Hesselo wind farm, the 1GW North Sea South zone and the 1GW North Sea Mid zone. Tenders for all three projects will open in autumn 2025.
The CfD scheme was introduced earlier this year following the failure of two 3GW subsidy-free offshore wind auctions in December 2024 and April 2025.
The Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities said: “We are in ongoing, constructive dialogue with the European Commission regarding the support scheme. The process for state aid approval is proceeding according to plan.