WindEurope has urged governments to “get their act together” after data showed the region is failing to build enough new wind power capacity.
The newly released data shows Europe built 6.8GW of new wind in the first half of 2025.
WindEurope said this is less than expected – and not nearly enough to deliver the EU’s 2030 energy security and climate targets.
The industry body said its figures show Germany is surging ahead while the rest of Europe “stagnates”.
Most of the new wind was developed in Germany, which is set to build 5GW of onshore wind this year. This is nearly three times more than Germany has been building over the last five years.
However, other countries in Europe are “not doing enough” to build more wind.
Of the 6.8GW of new wind power capacity in the first half of 2025, 5.3GW was in the EU and 89% of it was onshore wind.
Europe now has a total of 291GW of wind power, comprising 254GW on land and 37GW at sea.
WindEurope said Germany’s strong performance was largely because it was the first country to “rigorously implement” new EU permitting rules.
As a result, Germany permitted a record 15GW of new onshore wind farms in 2024 and are on track to beat that in 2025, with 8GW of onshore wind permits granted in the first half of 2025.
On average, German authorities now grant permits within 18 months – within the deadlines in the Renewable Energy Directive (REDIII).
However, WindEurope said none of the other 26 EU countries permits new wind farms within the REDIII deadline of 24 months.
“Governments must get their act together on wind energy,” said WindEurope chief executive Giles Dickson. “Wind is competitive – it brings down electricity costs for citizens and businesses.
“Wind is secure – home-grown wind turbines reduce costly and dangerous dependencies on fossil fuel imports.
“And wind is good for the economy – it creates jobs and tax income. Around 400,000 people in Europe work in wind already, and each new wind turbine contributes €16m to Europe’s GDP.
“But governments are still failing to get wind permitted and built fast enough.”
WindEurope said slow progress on permitting, grids and electrification mean Europe will now build less new wind in 2025 than previously expected.
At the start of the year, the industry body expected 22.5GW of new installations. It now expects 19GW. For the EU, it expected 17GW and has now reduced this to 14.5GW.
WindEurope now expects the EU to have 344GW of wind energy capacity by 2030: 298GW onshore and 46GW offshore. The EU 2030 wind energy target is 425GW in total.
While new installations are falling short of expectations, wind turbine orders and investments in new wind farms point upwards.
Europe took €34bn worth of final investment decisions (FIDs) in new wind farms in the first half of 2025 – more than the total FIDs in 2024.
Europe also saw 11.3GW of firm wind turbine orders in the first half of 2025, up 19% on the first half of 2024. This breaks down into 8.8GW of onshore and 2.5GW of offshore turbines ordered.