Türkçe sürüm: Avrupa’da Rüzgar Enerjisinden Elektrik Üretmek, Çin’de Üretmenin İki Katına Mal Oluyor

The Energy Transition Outlook 2026, published by DNV this week, highlights that the cost of generating electricity from onshore wind in Europe has risen to twice that of China. A short while ago we laid out the risks that the “Made in Europe” decision creates for Türkiye’s wind industry. This article strengthens the numerical basis of that discussion: as Europe insists on manufacturing within its own borders, how will it close this cost gap?

What does DNV say?

In the 2026 edition of the Energy Transition Outlook, now in its tenth year, DNV has squeezed a single sentence into the wind chapter: the LCOE of onshore wind in Europe today is twice that of China, and in North America it is 67% higher. The sentence reads like a footnote; yet this is the figure that shapes the entire debate on European industrial policy.

The report’s wind picture is as follows:

	DNV ETO 2026
Global onshore wind LCOE*	< 55 USD/MWh
Fixed offshore LCOE	~113 USD/MWh
Floating offshore LCOE	350–450 USD/MWh
Europe onshore LCOE / China LCOE	2x
North America onshore LCOE / China LCOE	+67%
Global grid-connected wind capacity	1.4 TW (2025) → 3.5 TW (2040)
Share of wind in Europe’s electricity generation	18% (2025) → 33% (2040)
Europe fixed offshore, 2040	170 GW (revised down from the previous year)
China fixed offshore, 2040	270 GW (revised up)

*: Figures are three-year averages and include the cost of capital and the cost of permitting lead times.

It is worth assessing these trends comparatively. First, in almost every geography wind is now an instrument of energy security rather than of climate policy; this can be seen in DNV’s report as well. Moreover, the country producing the cheapest turbine is now China, and Chinese OEMs are supplying not only their domestic market but also India, the Middle East and North Africa. Europe and North America continue to be the core market of European OEMs, but it must be underlined here too that the reason they can hold on in these markets is not cost; it is policy, bankability and trust preferences.

Where does the gap come from?

In the report, turbine cost, the main source of the gap, is essentially attributed to these factors: economies of scale, low labour and material costs, and a mature domestic supply chain.

Scale. Close to half of the world’s onshore wind capacity is located in China. If an OEM produces tens of thousands of blades and nacelles a year for its domestic market alone, the cost of moulds, welding lines and engineering naturally melts away per unit. The European market, by contrast, is more fragmented: each country has its own auction calendar, its own grid queue and its own permitting timeline.

Materials and labour. Most of the cost of an onshore turbine consists of steel, castings, composites and labour. In Europe, steel and energy prices have been structurally high since 2022; the ETS carbon price places an additional burden on the European manufacturer; and from 2026 CBAM carries the same burden over to suppliers such as Türkiye. In China, none of these items is under the same pressure.

Supply chain. Because a Chinese OEM’s tower, blade, gearbox and generator suppliers are in the same region, it can source competitively within the same price regime. A European OEM, on the other hand, has to bring together the tower from one country, the castings from another and the mechanical parts from a third geography such as Türkiye. In essence, this dispersion has so far been not a weakness but, on the contrary, an economic policy that has limited the further widening of Europe’s cost gap by providing competitive supply. From now on, however, if the definition of “Made in Europe” is narrowed, what will actually be narrowed is Europe’s own purchasing power.

Is “Made in Europe” possible at twice the cost?

Europe wants three things at once: to generate 65% of its electricity from wind and solar in 2040, to manufacture this capacity within its own borders, and to keep its industry competitive. Looking at DNV’s figures, it is not at all hard for me to say that all three cannot happen at the same time. It looks as though Europe will have to choose two.

Auctions with non-price criteria, local content bonuses and public support cannot really bring the price of the turbine down, and costs that do not fall will continue to be reflected in auction outcomes. European industry already complains about energy costs; in the report’s own framing, the real obstacle to electrification is no longer generation capacity but system integration. Expensive turbines, expensive grids, expensive energy.

It is therefore worth drawing the roadmap wisely: “production in Europe” and “production for Europe” are not the same thing. The base that makes up European OEMs’ costs today is already built on parts coming from Türkiye within the Customs Union, and from North Africa and the Balkans under free trade agreements. Copying the Made in EU policy applied in automotive over to wind will cut this base away; we should not forget that every supplier left out of the game means a few more euros per MWh that the European OEM loses to its Chinese rival.

Europe’s question should not be “who should build the turbine” but “who can compete at twice China’s cost“. Every wrong answer to the first question will keep deepening the answer to the second.

Türkiye: the shortest answer to Europe’s cost problem

In the previous article I described the risk of Türkiye being left outside the definition of “Made in Europe”. DNV’s figure shows the other side of that risk: leaving Türkiye out is expensive for Europe too. Because Türkiye is one of the few geographies that narrow the cost gap between European OEMs and China, and it does so from within the Customs Union.

DNV mentions Türkiye in four places in the report, and all of them point in the same direction:

• In the category of energy-importing countries, as a country pursuing its renewable investment by deepening clean energy cooperation with Europe.
• As a country promoting its clean technology industry through the YEKDEM local content bonus and the HIT-30 programme.
• As co-host of COP31, the carrier of the “35% electrification by 2035” target.
• As one of three countries moving towards their first offshore wind auction.

This is the profile not of a supplier to the EU, but of a partner. And this is exactly what we mean when we say “Made with Europe”: Europe building the cost base of its industrial policy together with its neighbours. It is the only realistic lever Europe has to close the gap, because the EU cannot bring China’s labour costs to Germany, but it can recognise Türkiye’s mechanical manufacturing costs as part of the European supply chain.

Generating electricity from wind costs Europe twice what it costs China. The way to bring this figure down runs not through narrowing Europe’s borders, but through widening its supply chain.

Sources

• DNV, Energy Transition Outlook 2026 — A global and regional forecast to 2060, October 2026; in particular section 4.4 (Wind, pp. 67–69), section 1.2 (Geopolitics, pp. 16–18) and the Europe regional summary (p. 143).
• İskender Kökey, “Automotive Has Fallen. Is Wind Next?”, 20 October 2026.