G+ Incident Data Report 2025 Shows Drop in Severe Offshore Wind Injuries

The G+ Incident Data Report 2025 shows offshore wind safety improving across most serious metrics, even as total hours worked in the sector rose 5% to 69.2 million hours during the year. Lost time injury frequency fell by 8%, high potential incidents declined by 14%, and asset damage incidents dropped by 28%, all against a backdrop of continued industry expansion.

What the G+ Incident Data Report 2025 actually found

The headline numbers are, on balance, encouraging. Lost workday injuries edged down from 95 to 93. Near misses fell 16%. No fatalities were recorded among G+ members across the year. The data drew on 1,791 reports covering hazards, near misses, asset damage and injuries across development, construction and operational sites.

One figure cuts against the trend: the total recordable injury rate rose 4% to 3.48. G+ attributes that increase to a rise in lower-severity incidents rather than any deterioration in serious harm prevention. The report links the uptick directly to the sector’s shifting profile: as the industry moves from building wind farms to running them, day-to-day maintenance work generates a higher volume of minor injuries.

Routine maintenance, manual handling and lifting operations were identified as the highest-risk processes in the current operational environment. That is worth watching. Operations-phase risk is less dramatic than construction-phase risk but it is also more persistent, spread across hundreds of technicians boarding turbines in all weathers, day in, day out, for the life of an asset.

Industry voices: progress with caveats

Lisbeth Frømling, G+ chair and Ørsted senior vice president QHSE, welcomed the direction of travel while flagging where attention is needed. ‘As offshore wind continues to scale globally, maintaining a strong safety performance depends on how effectively we respond to an evolving risk landscape,’ she said. ‘This year’s data demonstrates encouraging progress but also underlines the need to focus on operational safety, particularly in routine activities and manual handling.’

Dr Nick Wayth, chief executive of the Energy Institute, which operates G+ in partnership with the industry group, pointed to the same structural shift. ‘As offshore wind moves into an increasingly operational phase, managing everyday risks becomes critical,’ he said. ‘A secure energy transition depends on the safety of the people behind it, and the Energy Institute is committed to supporting the sector in turning insight into safer outcomes on the ground.’

Both statements are measured rather than triumphant, which is the appropriate register. A 4% rise in the total recordable injury rate is not a crisis, but in a sector projecting continued capacity growth it is a signal worth taking seriously rather than burying beneath the more flattering metrics.

Who sits inside the G+ framework

G+ covers six programmes: incident data reporting, good practice guidelines, safe by design, learning from incidents, lifesaving rules and the Wind Operation Safety Rules. Its membership includes Ørsted, RWE, Equinor, Iberdrola, Siemens Gamesa, SSE, TotalEnergies, Vattenfall, Vestas, EDF Power Solutions, JERA Nex bp and Ocean Winds, alongside associate members.

That roster covers a substantial share of global offshore wind capacity, which gives the G+ dataset reasonable weight as an industry-wide indicator rather than a single operator’s self-reporting. The 1,791 data points feeding the 2025 report span the full project lifecycle, from development through construction to operations, which is precisely where the picture is now most complex.

With the operational fleet expanding year on year, the absolute number of routine maintenance tasks will rise regardless of how well the industry manages risk per task. G+ has signalled it is aware of that trajectory. Whether its members’ shared-learning model translates into measurable progress on manual handling and lifting injuries is the metric to watch in the 2026 report.