Denmark
The birthplace of offshore wind drew zero bids in 2024, redesigned the tender around a state price guarantee, and awarded 1.8 GW in August 2026.
Assessment
as of 2026-09-11Established. Denmark built the world's first offshore wind farm and runs a long-standing state-tender regime, but its operating fleet, sixteen farms and about 2.6 GW in our records, is modest in absolute terms next to the UK or Germany. It is a deep, experienced market rather than a high-volume one. Until 2023 it also ran a parallel "open-door" track, where a developer that found a site effectively acquired the right to build it; that track closed in February 2023 after awarding without competition was assessed as a likely breach of EU state-aid law, and the farms left on it are stalled.
Behind, but no longer stalled. In December 2024 Denmark offered three North Sea sites without subsidy, attaching a thirty-year annual concession payment for use of the seabed and mandatory 20% state co-ownership of each farm, and received no bids at all. The agency reopened the programme in November 2025 on different terms: a two-sided contract for difference with a state price guarantee, and no equity stake or concession payment. On 4 August 2026 it awarded two of the three sites to Vattenfall: North Sea I Mid, at least 1,000 MW, at DKK 504 per MWh against two bids, and Hesselø, at least 800 MW, at DKK 542 per MWh against five. The guarantee runs twenty years from completion. Our records still show neither farm's revenue as secured, because contract signature follows verification formalities after the award. Thor, at 1,080 MW the largest Danish farm yet, produced first power on 16 March 2026 and is expected to be fully operating in 2027. The third site, North Sea South, takes bids in October 2028.
Medium. Political commitment to offshore wind is genuine and the ambition is large, but both of Denmark's recent setbacks were design choices rather than failures of will: a risk-transfer package no bidder would accept, and an origination track the EU required it to close. Both have now been answered. The tender was redesigned and cleared, and the open-door farms sit outside the new route, unable to enter the tender that replaced it. The remaining question is budgetary rather than political: the redesigned programme carries a state payment ceiling, and the last site has to clear it in 2028.
Mixed. The recovery is real: a redesigned tender cleared, 1.8 GW went to a single credible developer, and Thor is producing. But the 2023 political agreement's target of at least 9 GW of additional offshore wind operating before the end of 2030, a 6 GW radial programme plus the 3 GW Bornholm Energy Island, has been de-scoped in practice: the radial programme was re-cut to about 2.8 GW across three sites after the 2024 failure, the North Sea Energy Island has slipped toward 2036, and neither farm awarded in August 2026 is expected to operate before 2032. Denmark will keep building. It will not reach 2030 with the fleet it legislated for.
The 2024 failure and the 2026 recovery both turned on tender design rather than political will; the 2030 target has since been de-scoped in practice.
- Danish Energy Agency · 2024-12 · verified
- Danish Energy Agency · 2023 · moderate
- Danish Energy Agency (Energistyrelsen) · 2025-11 · verified
- Danish Energy Agency (Energistyrelsen) · 2026-08-04 · verified
- Vattenfall · 2026-08-04 · verified
- RWE · 2026-03-17 · verified
State of the market
as of 2026-10-13Delivered to 13 Oct 2026; expected from then. The 2026 column is 0.5 GW still expected this year, with nothing delivered so far. 11 GW of live pipeline weights to 5.6 GW expected to complete; 0.1 GW of that sits beyond 2040 and is not drawn. Projects on hold, and projects with no dated milestone, are modelled and sit in the expected line.
Source: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/denmark · data as of 13 Oct 2026
How this line is made
The Expected Buildout line answers one question: of the pipeline announced today, how much actually gets built, and when? It is not a scenario and not a target tracker; it is the database's live pipeline, passed through two filters measured from the industry's own delivery record.
Whether a project completes. Every project in development carries a completion weight, banded Delivering / Expected / Prospective / Fragile. A proposal (a site where no authority has yet granted rights) carries none and sits outside this line entirely; it is listed, not counted. The starting point is the historical completion rate of its lifecycle stage: of projects that reached construction, 97% delivered; financed but not yet building, 92%; consented without financing, 75%; early development, 61%; on hold, 15%. That base rate is then adjusted by what the project has actually secured (offtake, grid, consents, investment decision) and decays if a project sits quiet past its stage's normal dwell time.
When it delivers. Each project also carries a completion-date distribution: a shape, not a single year, right-skewed because offshore wind slips late far more often than it runs early. The peak sits on a rule-based expected date chained from the project's latest achieved milestone; the width of the late tail is fitted to how far past their announced dates real projects actually landed: builders slip tight (60% on time, n=144), financed projects tighter still (76%, n=95), consented-only projects carry the fat tail, with 21% landing three or more years late (n=126). A stated date faster than any comparable project has ever achieved is floored to the achievable window and flagged, never taken at face value.
The line is the sum, across every live project, of capacity × completion weight × the probability it delivers in each year. For projects already under construction, a share of expected capacity is counted at first power, because turbines start generating before a wind farm is fully commissioned, so a market's chart can show capacity arriving a year before a project's stated completion date. Delivered history is metered fact; the line inherits every assumption above and nothing else.
Honest limits. The weights are calibrated on a fleet whose failures have so far been overwhelmingly pre-financing, so completion rates after FID rest on a record with few failures and are ceilings, not guarantees. The slip fitted on consented projects is the loosest (the "three or more years late" bucket spans many years). Policy shocks arrive faster than base rates move; the weights see a stop-work order only as its lifecycle consequences accrue. And the line redistributes as the database learns: it is re-derived on every data refresh, not frozen.
Full per-project workings (each project's weight, band, expected date and distribution) are on its project page. Calibration v2.0-phase0 · generated 2026-10-13; every figure above is read from the generated calibration file, never typed.
Auction outlook
forecast · 2 rounds trackedLater phase of the redesigned programme; bid deadline October 2028 (firmed from "autumn 2028" by the 4 Aug 2026 award release: "budfrist i oktober 2028"); completion end-2034. CfD cap DKK 8.2bn.
Baltic energy island, 3 GW; DK-DE bilateral investment agreement 26 Jan 2026; commissioning mid-2030s. The wind-generation tender date is not officially fixed (project firmer than the tender date). NB the larger North Sea Energy Island (up to 10 GW) is POSTPONED (~2036).
Source: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/denmark · data as of 13 Oct 2026
Origination ladder
settled rounds → projectsSource: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/denmark · data as of 13 Oct 2026
3 sites designated for forecast rounds (7 GW) are not in the history ladder — pre-tender zones are the auction outlook's rounds-in-waiting: Bornholm Energy Island · Nordsøen Syd · North Sea Energy Island.