Earlier this year I was visiting Normandy, one of the Regions of France I am not familiar with. During that week I took a day to visit Etretat and its famous cliffs. This allowed me to have a close eye view from the local offshore wind farm.
Located at a minimum of 13 km / 8 miles from shore, one can’t say this 500 MW offshore wind farm is an eyesore. The 71 wind turbines and their blades are barely visible and produce enough electricity for 770,000 people since June 2024 (source : the wind farm’s official website).
I take this note as an opportunity to share a video you might not have seen unless you are following closely the global energy transition trends and news. An advertisement from the Swedish company Vattenfal, it features no less than Samuel L Jackson and his famous use of the word “motherf_er”.
I find that quite brilliant (and hilarious) as it encapsulates my opinion on offshore wind farms. What about you ?
Currently, the global offshore wind capacity is 92.5 GW. According to GWEC Market Intelligence, the world is on-track to install 234 GW of offshore wind by 2030. To the same source, global capacity should reach a massive 2,000 GW of capacity by 2050 to stay within 1.5°C of global warming.
In its Offshore Wind Outlook 2019, the International Energy Agency stated that this energy source had the “remarkable potential (…) to generate more than 420 000 TWh per year worldwide. This is more than 18 times global electricity demand today.“
Offshore wind farms produce more electricity and more often than their onshore counterparts thanks to larger and higher turbines that get a better access to wind. Additionally, most people on Earth live less than 150 km / 90 miles to the shores.
According to Wikipedia, in 2025, the five largest markets for offshore wind were China (42,3 GW installed), the UK (16 GW), Germany (10 GW), the Netherlands (5.4 GW) and Denmark (2.7 GW)…
France is the 8th largest market with 1.5 GW installed capacity and the US are 13th with a tiny 0.17 GW capacity. One could politely say there is room for improvement, especially when you know that the US have 100,000 miles of coastlines.
Image credits : The Vattenfal advertisement.
