Auction success for EnBW: Contract secured for one GW offshore wind farm in the German North Sea
Karlsruhe/Hamburg. EnBW has been awarded a contract by the Federal Network Agency at an auction to develop a one gigawatt (GW) offshore wind farm in the North Sea. The wind farm is set to enter operation 120 km northwest of Heligoland in 2031 and will cover the electricity needs of 1.35 million households.
EnBW CEO Georg Stamatelopoulos: “Winning the auction represents another important milestone in the restructuring of our generation portfolio. We want to expand renewable energy capacity to between 10 and 11.5 GW by 2030 and be a climate-neutral company by 2035. To this end, we are investing a total of 40 billion euros in the energy transition by 2030, around a third of our total investment alone in the construction of wind farms and solar parks as well as flexibly controllable and hydrogen-ready gas power plants.”
Peter Heydecker, Board Member for Sustainable Generation Infrastructure: “The contract is a major success for our offshore team and shows that we can realize cost-efficient offshore wind projects in Germany and Europe. We already operate four offshore wind farms off the German coast. What’s more, we are currently building ‘He Dreiht’ in the North Sea, Germany's largest offshore wind farm to be built without state funding. We are now looking forward to building another offshore wind farm in our home market of Germany.”
EnBW plans to sell much of the electricity produced by the offshore wind farm to industrial customers in the future through power purchase agreements (PPAs). "Even before construction work had started on our current ‘He Dreiht’ project, we had already marketed more than half of the electricity using PPAs. The considerable interest shown by customers validates our decision to conclude PPAs for our next offshore wind farm as well, enabling us to play our part in decarbonizing the industry,” explained Heydecker.
EnBW’s offshore wind power portfolio in Germany
EnBW has been planning, building and operating offshore wind farms in Germany and Europe for around 15 years. In the Baltic Sea, EnBW operates the EnBW Baltic 1 and Baltic 2 offshore wind farms, while in the North Sea it operates the Hohe See and Albatros wind farms. The total capacity of the current portfolio is around 1 GW. Moreover, the He Dreiht offshore wind farm has been under construction since May 2024 and is set to enter operation at the end of 2025 with a capacity of 960 megawatts. In addition, EnBW and bp are developing three wind farms in the UK – Mona, Morgan and Morven – with a total capacity of 5.9 GW.
About EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG
With a workforce of over 28,000 employees, EnBW is one of the largest energy supply companies in Germany and Europe. It supplies electricity, gas and water together with infrastructure and energy-related products and services to around 5.5 million customers. In the company’s transformation from a traditional energy provider to a sustainable infrastructure group, the expansion of renewable energy sources and of the distribution and transportation grids for electricity and gas are cornerstones of EnBW’s growth strategy and the focus of its investment spending. By 2030, EnBW plans gross investment of 40 billion euros, around 90 percent of which is earmarked for Germany. By the end of 2025, renewables are set to account for more than half of EnBW’s generation portfolio. The aim is to phase out coal by the end of 2028. These are key milestones on the company’s way to achieving climate neutrality by 2035. www.enbw.com