We plan to jointly develop offshore wind farms off the coasts of Great Britain in a 50:50 partnership with bp. An important first milestone has now been reached: In an auction held by the Crown Estate to award offshore wind rights, we had our bids accepted for two large areas in the Irish Sea.
We are delighted by the success in this auction against fierce international competition. The award of these sites confirms that bp and EnBW are the right partners for each other, with the right strategy and the right expertise.
In cooperation with bp, we are planning to construct two offshore wind farms on these high-quality sites with a total output of three gigawatts, of which 1.5 gigawatts will be available to each partner. This is enough to cover the energy demands of around 3.4 million households. The wind farms are due to be placed into operation from 2028.
Success thanks to synergy and teamwork
The Crown Estate (TCE), the British sovereign’s public estate property management organization, had selected a total of four areas, within which six project areas were awarded to bidders. The bid from EnBW and bp was successful against a prestigious field of competitors. “Our bids for the most attractive areas in the auction proved successful. These areas stand out, in particular, due to their above-average wind conditions and favorable prospects for obtaining the required approvals,” says Dirk Güsewell, member of the EnBW Board of Management. The application for connecting both wind farms to the grid has already been submitted.
EnBW and bp enjoy further success in offshore wind energy
Near to our “Weesow-Willmersdorf” solar park – which is the largest solar park in Germany – construction work is once again underway: Two additional solar parks are being built on areas each covering around 125 hectares in Alttrebbin and Gottesgabe. Each solar park has an output of 150 megawatts, which is sufficient to provide around 90,000 households with solar energy and save around 200,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year, without the need for state funding. It will take around one year to construct the solar parks and the total of 700,000 solar modules. The solar parks will be gradually placed into operation by the end of March 2022. An annual increase of at least 10 gigawatts of solar energy is needed in order to achieve the German target of generating 65 percent of all power from renewable sources by 2030.
We can help to substantially push forward the Energiewende by expanding solar energy.
The construction work at both solar parks is being carried out in parallel. More than 40 companies are participating in the projects. To connect up the solar parks, we are building our own transformer stations for feeding the electricity into the 110 kV grid.
We concluded two long-term power purchase agreements for renewable energies in December. The airport operator Fraport will be able to reduce its carbon footprint at its headquarters in Frankfurt with green offshore wind energy from the “He Dreiht” offshore wind farm.
Long-term power purchase agreements are a market response to advancing the Energiewende even without state funding.
Fraport will purchase 85 megawatts (MW) of the total output of 900 MW from our future offshore wind farm that will be built without state funding in the German North Sea. The Corporate Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA) comes into force in the second half of 2026 and has a term of 15 years. With the expiry of traditional funding as part of the EEG (German Renewable Energies Act), PPAs are becoming a key element of the Energiewende. They provide developers of renewable energy projects with a reliable source of finance, while also helping purchasers to quickly achieve ambitious climate targets.
Covestro will produce its products in future using solar power
The plastics manufacturer Covestro AG, from Leverkusen, will rely on green energy in the future and has secured a third of the electricity produced by the Weesow-Willmersdorf solar park for 15 years. Our solar park near to Berlin was constructed without any state funding and its 465,000 solar modules have been fully connected to the grid since March 2021. Covestro has secured 63 of the total installed output of 187 megawatts from the beginning of the year.