Offshore Wind Energy: A Solution for the Revival of the Black Sea Region?
The need for a transition to a green economy is a debate that should have been settled long ago so that the world’s countries could focus on making clean production technologies not only environmentally friendly but also cost-effective. Today, in an age when truth feels more subjective and interpretable than ever, this debate has become increasingly ambiguous and has taken on political connotations that are far too strong for a field as technical as this one.
The Paris Agreement (2015) – which should be a global strategy to respond to the threat of climate change –, although it is presented as a legally binding international treaty on climate change (United Nations, 2015), its implementation is now more of an option than a rule, with carbon-neutral target states running into multiple obstacles before signing.
While the world’s biggest polluters are busy arguing about the need to replace conventional energy sources with renewables, the European Union, with a few small exceptions, is charging into a renewable future. This ambitious process is intended to increase the degree of energy independence of the community space and to decouple the economic growth from resource consumption.
Gone with the wind?
The Black Sea region, which is rich in wind resources, can seize the opportunity and ride the wave, becoming relevant once again for the Old World. Throughout the region, which has sun, wind and a lot of hope, the green power is on the rise – just not fast enough. Only the Black Sea’s offshore zone offers a technical wind potential of 435 GW (World Bank, 2020). However, to date, no wind turbine has reflected in the waters of this sea, although, as we will see later, the business can be profitable.
To determine whether investments in renewable energy production capacities in the Black Sea would be profitable for the private operators, it is necessary to calculate the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), with simulation of real production conditions (such as wind constancy, direction and speed) and investment and operating costs.
The formula used to calculate LCOE is:
Where CAPEX means the investment costs, OPEX represents operational and maintenance expenses, Et is the energy produced annually, and WACCreal is the weighted average cost of capital.
Where D is total debt, E is the equity, rd is the interest rate on debt, re is the investor return, and T is the taxation.
According to Kost et al. (2024), the values proposed for calculating the LCOE for offshore wind farms would be the following: the debt share is 70%, the equity share is 30%, the cost of debt is 7%, and the investor return is 10%. CAPEX is in the range of 2200 euro/kW and 3400 euro/kW, and OPEXfixed is set at 39 euro/kWh and OPEXvariable (production-dependent) is 0.008. Also, Kost et al. (2024) estimate that the LCOE for the most favourable areas for wind energy production in Europe is in the range of 54 euro/MWh and 91 euro/MWh, falling to 50 euro/MWh - 83 euro/MWh by 2045.
To estimate the LCOE in the Black Sea as accurately as possible, it is necessary to identify real locations with available data on the speed and constancy of wind and viable production technologies, available on the market and already tested. In the present study, I chose the SG 14-236 DD, GE Haliade-X, Vestas V236 and MingYang MySE 12-242 wind turbines. Also, 8 points on the North-West coast of the Black Sea, in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, were chosen as locations. The results are available in Table 1.
The technical characteristics for each wind turbine were obtained from the Wind Turbine Models website and the meteorological data regarding the chosen locations were obtained from Meteoblue web platform.
Table 1. Heatmap with the levelized cost of offshore wind energy production in the Black Sea
The wind of change!
In conclusion, the offshore area of the Black Sea is favourable for the installation of wind farms, with the risk that the investment would pay off at a slow pace being very low. In cases where CAPEX and production are at an average level, the investment is profitable for each of the analysed technologies, with the LCOE being, in almost all cases (about 80%), in the range of 54 euro/MWh - 91 euro/MWh. The only scenario where LCOE would exceed this range in most cases is when the investment reaches the maximum limit (3400 euro/kW) and production is minimal. Even in this pessimistic scenario, the LCOE remains at values that can be profitable, well below those of nuclear energy production (136 euro/MWh - 490 euro/MWh) or biogas (201 euro/MWh - 325 euro/MWh).
The offshore wind farms previously analysed should not be limited to the areas administered by Romania, Bulgaria or Turkey. They can be extended throughout the shallow area of the Black Sea, and even in some deeper areas, by installing floating turbines. The development of this sector would contribute considerably to the energy independence of the region and to the improvement of economic cooperation between the Pontic states, which would be engaged in joint projects necessary to increase energy transport capacities and interconnections.
The main real challenge for the joint development of offshore wind farms lies in the capacity of national energy systems and the interconnections between them to integrate the energy which can generate significant variations in power flows. For example, in Romania, the infrastructure in the Dobrogea area is used at maximum capacity, requiring significant additional investments, a situation similar to that in other Black Sea countries. For such investments to be possible, it is necessary to develop the electricity transmission network (TSO) on the entire coast of Black Sea, the necessary investments being the responsibility of the transmission and system operators in each state.
The expansion of the transport infrastructure and the increase in interconnection capacity contribute significantly to addressing the issue of volatility in renewable energy production, by increasing the possibilities for balancing through energy imports and exports. The more extensive the transmission infrastructure is and the more production sources it integrates, the more options the TSO has for balancing the system, without being dependent on on-grid energy production through polluting technologies.
Photo source: PxHere.com.
Bibliography
Kost, C., Muller, P., Schweiger, J. S., Fluri, V., Thomsen, J., (2024). Levelized Cost of Electricity Renewable Energy Technologies. Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems Ise https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html.
Meteoblue, (2025). Date climatice și meteorologice istorice simulate pentru Çilingozçiftliği. https://www.meteoblue.com/ro/vreme/historyclimate/climatemodelled/.
United Nations, (2015). Climate Change. What is the Paris Agreement? Available at: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement.
Wind Turbine Models Database, (2025). https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/.
World Bank, (2020). Offshore Wind Technical Potential in the Black Sea. Available at: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/718341586846771829/pdf/Technical-Potential-for-Offshore-Wind-in-Black-Sea-Map.pdf.
