Bigger wind turbines and relaxed minimum distance rules from buildings have doubled Europe’s potential for commercially viable wind power since a similar assessment just seven years ago.
France and Spain alone could generate enough electricity equivalent to the EU’s projected 2050 demand of around 4,000 TWh, new modelling by the bloc’s researchers at the JRC found this week.
The new report notes “substantially higher onshore wind potential” as many EU countries “double their installation capacity.” That means “onshore wind can play a much bigger role in the decarbonisation of Europe’s energy system than previously thought,” the document adds.

If fully utilised, onshore wind could produce 19,000 TWh of electricity per year in the EU based on current distance rules. In recent years, countries like Poland and Finland have allowed turbines to be deployed nearer to settlements, which means that more wind capacity can be deployed.
However, most of the boost in potential comes from researchers assessing wind flows based on 100-metre-high turbines instead of the 80-metre-high models from 2018 – the higher the turbine, the better the wind.
“Bigger, more efficient wind turbines are the key to more electricity generation,” said a spokesperson for industry association WindEurope, adding that replacing old turbines with newer models “reduces the number of turbines in a wind farm by 25%, while more than tripling the output of the wind farm.”
The second big takeaway is the unequal geographic distribution across Europe, with the Nordics, Spain, France, Poland, and Romania standing out as the premier wind countries in the EU.
The country with the largest volume of wind energy today, Germany, comes in seventh with a potential of only 1000 TWh.
“Making use of these potentials will also require significant expansion of cross-border transmission,” said energy expert Christoph Maurer on Bluesky.