From the Old Path of Shipbuilding onto the New Path of Offshore Wind Energy? The Case of Northern Germany

Abstract

Wind energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, Northern Germany. Recently, big hopes have been particularly set on the offshore wind energy industry. Two recently discussed evolutionary concepts explain the emergence of new industries, such as wind energy, in space: the windows of locational opportunity concept stresses the locational freedom in the earliest stages of industrial development, whereas path creation emphasizes the role of existing industrial development paths, such as shipbuilding, from which new industrial paths, such as wind energy, emerge. This paper aims at analysing whether the new industrial path of offshore wind energy emerged out of existing paths, mainly shipbuilding, in the five states of coastal Germany, namely Bremen, Lower Saxony, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It concludes that shipbuilding only indirectly affected the emergence of the new industrial development path of the offshore wind energy industry in Northern Germany.

Notes

Northern Germany consists of the states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as well as the city states of Bremen and Hamburg.

The costs are estimated at no less than €30 billion, so that from 2020 onwards, large parts of Europe can be provided with electricity powered by wind, solar and wave power works from the North Sea grid (Weser Kurier, 2010a).

Germanwind's study of the 40 core companies in the offshore wind energy cluster gave similar results.