German multinational energy company RWE will collaborate with France’s TotalEnergies to jointly develop two large-scale offshore wind projects off the German coast. The companies announced on October 7 that TotalEnergies is acquiring a 50% equity stake in the two projects from RWE, which was awarded the sites at the last German offshore wind auction in August this year. The companies had said at the time that they would look at jointly developing the projects. Final investment decisions are expected in 2027 and 2028, with the start of construction planned for 2029 and 2030. Officials said full commissioning is planned for 2031 and 2032. RWE already operates 19 offshore wind farms, including six off the coast of Germany . (caption id=”attachment_224135″ align=”alignnone” width=”640″)
This map shows the location of two major offshore wind projects being developed by RWE and TotalEnergies off the coast of Germany. Source: RWE(/caption) The locations announced Monday are about 70 miles northwest of Borkum, an island off the coast of Germany. Identified as N-9.1 and N-9.2, they will each be designed with a total generation capacity of 2 GW. “We are pleased to welcome TotalEnergies on board as our partner in the delivery of these large-scale offshore wind projects in our home market of Germany,” said Sven Utermöhlen, CEO of RWE Offshore Wind. “As a trusted partner in our Dutch offshore wind project OranjeWind, TotalEnergies shares our ambition to further stimulate the growth of offshore wind energy to accelerate the energy transition in Germany and beyond. Our RWE teams will bring their years of experience and in-depth knowledge of the offshore wind industry to successfully develop and build the two wind farms.” Olivier Jouny, SVP Renewables at TotalEnergies, said: “We are pleased to strengthen our ties with RWE, a major player in renewable energy and our partner in the OranjeWind project in the Netherlands. This new partnership contributes to our integrated development in the German electricity market. the largest in Europe, and will enable TotalEnergies to supply green electrons to decarbonise the country’s electricity and industry.” RWE currently has four large offshore wind farms under construction, including the Sofia offshore wind farm (1.4 GW) in Great Britain and the Thor offshore project (1.1 GW) in Denmark. Together with TotalEnergies, it is also building the 795 MW offshore wind farm OranjeWind in the Netherlands. Other installations currently being built include the Nordsee clusterwith a total capacity of 1.6 GW. Nordseecluster is located north of the island of Juist in Germany. RWE has said it wants to triple its global offshore wind capacity from 3.3 GW today to 10 GW by 2030.Darrel Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).
