More new offshore wind turbines were connected to the grid across Europe last year than ever before in a single year. With 4.2 gigawatts of installed capacity in offshore wind farms, preliminary figures show that 40% more were put into operation than in 2022, the wind industry association WindEurope announced in Brussels on Thursday. The EU accounted for 3 gigawatts of the total, which corresponds to an increase of 2.1 gigawatts compared to the previous year. By comparison, large coal-fired power plants have a capacity of just over 1 gigawatt. According to the figures, most of the new capacity…