ECOWENDE: Building the Wind Park the North Sea Actually Needs
When the Ecowende wind park Hollandse Kust West is fully operational at the end of 2026, it will be a global flagship for building energy infrastructure that is designed to enhance nature, ecology, and biodiversity while mitigating negative impacts. By installing a range innovations at the heart of the project, pairing pioneering ecology thinking with proven offshore delivery, Ecowende is demonstrating what is possible as the industry grows.
Supported by:
53 kilometres off the coast of IJmuiden, in the grey waters of the Dutch North Sea, something genuinely new is taking shape. Hollandse Kust West is, on the surface, another large-scale offshore wind development — 52 foundations, 15MW Vestas turbines, the TenneT substation ready to connect to the offshore grid. But peel back the engineering schedule and what emerges is a project unlike anything the offshore wind industry has attempted: a development designed from its very foundations to coexist with and enhance the natural world rather than simply exploit and impose upon it.
Ecowende, the joint venture between Eneco, Chubu and Shell, is aiming to guide the industry in a new direction, understanding nature and working to promote it. The Hollandse Kust West project is carrying 43 active ecology innovations through construction and into operation, testing methods and gathering data the industry has never had access to before.
The results, good and bad, will be shared openly with government and industry alike as the project innovates and tests new methods, facing challenges directly in order to learn valuable lessons. In a sector being asked to grow faster than ever, the question of how to do so without destroying the ecosystems it sits within has never been more urgent. Ecowende has put that question at the centre of everything.
CEO Tjalling de Bruin is direct about the origins of that focus. “The Dutch government identified the impact on nature from these developments in the North Sea,” he explains.
“Their ambition is to extend wind parks in the North Sea but that would mean more impact, so how could it work together with nature?”
The answer came through the tender, where Ecowende stood apart from competitors by committing not just to mitigation but to genuine innovation — filling knowledge gaps in offshore ecology rather than applying standard solutions and moving on. “This time, it is not an afterthought but is present right from the start, within the tender, and is engrained into the design. Ecological considerations have been a part of design — even in the turbines, foundations, and how all of this would be constructed and operated,” he says.
The backdrop is a European offshore wind sector under enormous pressure. WindEurope has called for the continent to move from ambition to delivery, with governments and industry turning commitments made at the North Sea Summit in January 2026 into physical infrastructure. The need for energy security — driven by geopolitical instability and the imperative to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels — has made offshore wind a strategic priority. Ecowende’s argument is that need for energy and ecological responsibility are not in conflict. They have to be pursued together, or nature and the industry will face the consequences.
MILESTONES IN THE WATER
The project is moving fast. All 52 foundations are in the ground, and the offshore grid connection is ready. Half the inter-array cables are laid, with the remainder to follow imminently. At the marshalling harbour, towers, nacelles and blades are being loaded onto the installation vessel. “This is the final year of construction and we want to have the turbines spinning, producing green electricity by the end of 2026,” de Bruin says. “We are looking at first power just before the summer begins, with finalisation of the whole site by the end of the year.”
Around 125 people work directly within the Ecowende JV, interfacing across a multi-contracting model spanning conventional offshore specialists and a new generation of ecological innovators — many of them start-ups quickly getting used to the harsh North Sea. “Together, we are making great progress, and we are happy to be building bridges,” de Bruin says. Those bridges, between ecologists and offshore engineers, are themselves one of the project’s most significant outputs.
“One of the biggest things here is building those bridges between ecologists and traditional offshore companies. Building bridges is more about breaking silos between industries: learning to speak each other’s language, getting used to each other’s ways of working. There is a positive tension and we see that the supply chain is working very well together.”
The most tangible technical milestone so far has come from below the waterline. In April 2026, contractors Van Oord and CAPE Holland announced the successful installation of three monopile foundations using innovative VibroJet technology — the first time the method had been deployed at commercial scale in offshore wind. The technique combines horizontal vibration with controlled water jets inside the monopile to fluidise the soil and reduce resistance, removing the need for an impact hammer and the significant underwater noise it generates.
QUIETER BY DESIGN
The noise problem is well understood, if not yet reliably solved. Standard practice involves an impact hammer, with noise mitigation provided through a combination of specialised hammer dampers, curtains, and bubble curtains — a complex, time consuming setup that is increasingly inadequate as monopiles grow larger and the energy required to drive them increases. Regulatory thresholds exist to protect marine mammals — porpoises, dolphins, seals — and the industry has been struggling against those thresholds as foundation scale climbs.
However, de Bruin describes the success that has been achieved through innovation. “We placed three monopiles at target depth using VibroJetting without any noise mitigation. The noise levels were the same as when using conventional piling methods with standard noise mitigation.”
The permit requirement set by the Dutch government is max 168 decibels, Ecowende’s ambition is 160. Both standard and new practices delivered at our ambition level. “This is the first demonstration that you can reduce sound without needing many additional measures — saving costs and time offshore when applied at scale,” confirms de Bruin.
Three monopiles were installed using the new jetting approach, six with the VibroHammer method, and 46 driven conventionally — with data collected across all methods to build the evidence base for future projects.
The second major innovation came from above the water. In January 2026, Ecowende completed the first ever Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone flight in the Netherlands over the high seas. A Primoco One 150 unmanned aerial vehicle took off from Den Helder Airport, followed a pre-programmed route across the wind farm area, and surveyed marine life using an integrated high-resolution camera system — emitting 84% less CO2 per flight than a manned aircraft. No international legislation existed for operations beyond the 12 nautical mile zone, and Ecowende and its partners had to push for a regulatory framework and permits before the flight could take place. Even NASA sent representatives to the launch, facing the same regulatory gap.
NATURE AS PRIORITY
The innovations in monopile installation and drone surveying are two of the most visible outputs from Ecowende’s ecology programme, but they sit within a much broader commitment. Cameras, sensors, microphones and radars are gathering data on bird behaviour — local and migratory — never captured at this scale offshore before. Below the surface, the seabed is monitored before, during and after construction to track the real impact of driving foundations into the North Sea floor. Larger scour protection rocks create small habitats for marine life. Artificial structures, tree reefs and oyster hubs, on the seabed provide breeding grounds for smaller species, attracting fish and eventually marine mammals. “Imagine, multiple wind parks with more breeding grounds for nature to revive — that would be fantastic,” de Bruin says.
The reality is a MUSE system capable of monitoring individual birds near the wind farm, predicting their flight paths, and guiding them around the turbines. Where that is not possible, a curtailment system will allow single turbines to pause rather than shutting down the entire park — the blunt instrument currently mandated by Dutch law during migration periods. “Currently in the Netherlands, when birds are migrating, the government has mandated that entire wind parks are curtailed and stop producing green electricity for the grid.
“Nobody likes this situation, but the knowledge gap means we cannot be more advanced and detailed,” says de Bruin. Ecowende’s data is the foundation for using more optimised instruments in the future, striking a better balance between green production and protection of birds and bats
All of this costs money. “We are investing because there is such a big knowledge gap and so much innovation,” de Bruin explains. The logic is clear: Ecowende is working through 43 ecology innovations so that future projects do not have to start from zero. What works will be shared. What does not will too. “I believe that this is the measure of our success. If others can take successful and effective innovations that we have helped to develop, that enhance marine life, and make them more cost efficient, we will have made a positive impact.”
Shareholders Eneco, Chubu and Shell came into the project knowing exactly what they were supporting. “They know that if we cannot build in harmony with nature, this industry will fail,” de Bruin says. That is a recognition of the constraint the sector is operating within, and of the principle de Bruin keeps returning to: ‘nature doesn’t need people, but people need nature’. In the Dutch North Sea in 2026, Ecowende is doing the hard work of proving those two things can share the same stretch of water.