A leading German company will build 1.6 GW of offshore wind farms in the North Sea

Energy giant RWE has made an investment decision to build two offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 1.6 gigawatts (GW) in the German North Sea, Germany’s largest energy producer announced on Monday.

RWE has made an investment decision for the Nordseecluster project, which will be located approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the island of Juist and will be developed in two phases.

Construction of the 660 MW Nordseecluster A is scheduled to start next year with full commissioning scheduled for early 2027, while construction of the 900 MW Nordseecluster B is scheduled to start in 2027 with full commissioning in 2027 at the beginning of 2029, the German company reported.

Suppliers of the main components for the entire cluster have already been selected, RWE added.

“RWE will use green electricity generated by wind farms to support its industrial customers on their decarbonization journey with tailored energy solutions. These customers increasingly include AI data center operators,” the German company said in a statement.

In recent years, RWE has been reducing coal production and increasing its offer of renewable energy sources.

Late last year, RWE said it planned to invest $60 billion (€55 billion) globally by 2030 in projects related to renewable energy, batteries, flexible generation and hydrogen.

After the end of winter 2023/2024, RWE permanently shut down five coal-fired power plant units in Germany, permanently removing 2,100 megawatts (MW) of lignite power from the network. Since the end of 2020, RWE has already decommissioned 12 brown coal-fired power plant units with a total capacity of 4,200 MW and is confident that it will complete the phase-out of coal by 2030.

Last week, RWE signed two 15-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Microsoft Corporation, under which Microsoft will purchase clean electricity from two new RWE onshore wind farms in Texas.

Author: Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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