A pan-European subsea energy grid

To connect wind farms and interconnect countries

A subsea supergrid could link offshore wind farms from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea. Since ‘the wind always blows somewhere,’ such a grid could serve to offset local shortages of wind power. That is the plan that the Irish wind energy company, Airtricity, is trying to win politicians over to.

An even more ambitious a plan is the Poseidon Initiative of Econcern, a Dutch company. Poseidon adds offshore fossil production and wave energy plants to the idea. What’s more, it also regards the subsea grid as an extra connection between the main onshore demand regions.

A first political framework for initiating such ideas could be the Trans-European Energy (TEN-E) Guidelines, adopted by the European Council this summer (24 July 2006). Those guidelines aim to reinforce the connections between the national electricity markets.