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Europe installed 6.8 GW of new wind farms in the first six months of the year. According to WindEurope, it isn’t nearly enough to deliver the EU’s 2030 energy security and climate targets.
WindEurope has also reduced the 2025 outlook for wind investments. In its latest wind energy data for Europe, the organization highlighted the increase in turbine orders and investments as positive signals.
Out of 6.8 GW of new wind, 5.3 GW was in the European Union, and 89% was onshore wind. Europe now has a total of 291 GW of wind capacity – 254 GW on land and 37 GW at sea, according to the data.
In the first half of 2024, Europe installed 6.4 GW. To achieve the 2030 targets, the EU needs to install about 30 GW of wind power every year.
Germany is by far the most successful country in Europe. It is set to install 5 GW of onshore wind this year, nearly three times as much as it has been building over the last five years. WindEurope attributed the success to the fact that the country was the first to rigorously implement the EU’s excellent new permitting rules.
Germany permitted a record 15 GW of new onshore wind farms in 2024 and is on track to beat that in 2025, with 8 GW of onshore wind permits granted in the first half of 2025, the report revealed.
While on average German authorities grant permits within 18 months, none of the other 26 EU countries permits new wind farms within the REDIII deadline of 24 months. WindEurope highlighted slow expansion of electricity grids, stagnating efforts to electrify Europe’s economy, and suboptimal auction design as key obstacles for faster wind deployment.
Dickson: Governments must get their act together on wind energy
WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson said that governments must get their act together on wind energy.
“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,” Dickson noted.
The organization stressed that Europe will build less new wind capacity in 2025 than it previously expected. At the start of the year, WindEurope estimated new wind installations at 22.5 GW, and now at 19 GW. The forecast for the EU is lowered from 17 GW to 14.5 GW.
It expects the EU to have 344 GW of wind energy capacity by 2030, compared to the 2030 target of 425 GW.
Two bright spots
Two bright spots are wind turbine orders and investments in new wind farms. Europe took EUR 34 billion worth of final investment decisions (FIDs) in new wind farms with a total capacity of 14 GW in the first half of 2025. It represented more than the total FIDs in 2024.
The majority of investments are for offshore wind, with six new projects, three of which in Poland, including the country’s largest-ever private investment, according to WindEurope.
Wind turbine orders have increased 19% and reached 11.3 GW.
According to Dickson, less new wind is bad news for Europe’s wider competitiveness. Industry in Europe is craving cheap electricity to compete with China and the US, he stressed.
“But too many governments remain half-hearted in their expansion of wind. This is not only threatening the wind sector. It’s also jeopardizing jobs and growth more widely – in steel, chemicals, and ICT. Doing business in Europe is so much harder for them if the EU can’t deliver on its energy targets”, Dickson underlined.
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