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Qabil Ashirov

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The European Commission has approved a €2.04 billion support scheme for the construction and operation of the first offshore wind farm in Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Zone in the North Sea.

The wind farm will have a maximum installed capacity of 735 megawatts (MW) and is expected to generate up to 2.6 terawatt-hours (TWh) of renewable electricity annually.

European Commission Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera highlighted the importance of domestic energy production, saying: "The energy we produce ourselves is energy we do not have to import."

She stressed that the project would strengthen both Europe's energy independence and its decarbonisation efforts.

The Commission had previously approved €682 million in state aid for the project in 2024 under the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework introduced in response to the war in Ukraine.

However, Belgium suspended the tender after a sharp increase in the cost of grid infrastructure, preventing the aid from being granted before the December 31, 2025 deadline.

The newly approved support will take the form of a two-way contract for difference (CfD).

Under this mechanism, the government will compensate the electricity producer when market prices fall below an agreed level and recover excess revenue when prices rise above that threshold.

A key feature of the scheme is that support will be calculated based on the wind farm's theoretical generation capacity rather than the actual volume of electricity delivered to the grid. This approach is designed to prevent subsidies from being paid for electricity generation during periods of negative market prices.