Europe added 2918MW of new offshore wind power in 2020, according to trade group WindEurope.
Nine new offshore wind farms came online in five countries, with the Netherlands connecting 1493MW, Belgium 706MW, the UK 483MW and Germany 219 MW.
Portugal completed the installation of a floating offshore wine farm, co-funded by the EU’s NER300 programme, WindEurope said.
Europe now has 25GW of offshore wind capacity made up of 116 projects operating across 12 countries, the trade group said.
WindEurope added that a record €26.3bn of investments were made in new offshore wind farms in 2020 to finance projects totalling 7.1GW.
WindEurope chief executive Giles Dickson said: “€26bn in new investments in 2020 is a huge vote of confidence in offshore wind.
“Investors see that offshore wind is cheap, reliable, and resilient – and that governments want more of it.
“And these investments will create jobs and growth. Every new offshore wind turbine generates €15m of economic activity.
“We expect the 77,000 people working in offshore wind today in Europe to be 200,000 by 2030.
“The new installations show the resilience of the offshore wind industry. Europe’s existing offshore wind farms kept operating.
“We kept building new wind farms. We kept making new turbines.”
WindEurope added that the average size of the turbines installed last year was over 8MW.
It noted that six major power purchase agreements (PPAs) were signed for power from offshore wind.
“This shows the corporate demand for clean offshore wind energy,” said WindEurope.
Large corporate off-takers included Nestle, Amazon, Deutsche Bahn, Borealis and Ineos.