Constanța, Galați, Brăila and Tulcea chosen as port hubs for offshore wind

The Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure approved, through Joint Order No. 517/667/2026, the Action Plan on using Romanian port infrastructure for manufacturing and building the equipment needed for offshore wind power plants. The act, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 641 of 4 August 2026, implements the obligation under Article 47 of Law No. 121/2024 on offshore wind energy, which requires the Government to set up an inter-institutional working group to coordinate the measures needed to develop the offshore supply chain. The actual plan, a 41-page strategic document, is published separately in Official Gazette of Romania No. 641 bis of the same date.

Romania has set itself a target of 3 GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2035, with the first construction works expected between 2031 and 2035. The plan starts from the premise that port infrastructure must be modernised and operational several years earlier, to support turbine installation campaigns, and proposes a vision extending beyond the initial 3 GW threshold.

Read also: Romania wants local parts in the Black Sea wind farms, but does not yet know what factories it has

What it changes in practice

The plan analyses Romania’s four major port groups (the Constanța Complex, the maritime Danube with the ports of Tulcea, Galați and Brăila, the river Danube, and the Danube-Black Sea navigable canals) and identifies a series of weaknesses specific to offshore wind readiness: insufficient space for pre-assembly and storage, low load-bearing capacity of quays for heavy parts (monopiles, foundations, nacelles), limited depth and length for jack-up vessels, insufficient specialised equipment, and limited integration with the national power grid.

For businesses in the sector, the plan confirms that specialised equipment (heavy-lift cranes, installation vessels, transport platforms) generally remains the responsibility of the project developer or its contractors, not the port authority, whose main responsibilities are infrastructure, load-bearing capacity and available space. Investments in the Port of Constanța, the most advanced, already total around EUR 2.5 billion across various stages of preparation, funded from EU instruments (the Connecting Europe Facility, the Cohesion Fund), national resources and, where applicable, private capital.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

• For the first time, a dedicated strategic plan is officially approved, connecting Romanian port industry to the offshore wind supply chain, as required by Article 47 of Law No. 121/2024.
• A timeline with dated milestones is set: completion of feasibility studies and port assessments (end of 2026), first modernisation tenders (mid-2027), start of construction on the first heavy-lift berths (end of 2028), first berth with onshore power supply (OPS) and digital infrastructure (2029), full operational capacity for at least one dedicated port hub (2030).
• Key ports are explicitly prioritised: Constanța as the main production and logistics hub, Galați and Brăila for complementary industrial capacity (metallurgy, shipyards), Tulcea for logistics and related services.
• Performance indicators (KPIs) are introduced for digitalisation, carbon emissions per tonne of cargo, the share of renewable energy used in ports, multimodal logistics capacity and occupational safety, with semi-annual reports to the Ministry of Energy and an independent annual audit.

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