Octopus buys into Walney Extension offshore wind project
Octopus buys into Walney Extension offshore wind project | Windpower Monthly
UK renewable energy provider Octopus Energy has bought a minority stake in the 659MW Walney Extension offshore wind farm.
The UK renewable energy company bought a 12.5% stake in the offshore wind project from AIP Management, the Copenhagen-based investment manager for Danish pension funds PKA and PFA.
Octopus said the purchase marked the sixth offshore wind project the company had invested in since 2022 after buying stakes in various other projects, including a 10% stake in the 731.5MW Borselle III and IV wind farm in the Dutch North Sea, and a 15.5% stake in the 270MW Lincs wind farm off the coast of Lincolnshire in the UK.
The latest purchase follows Octopus’s announcement of a £3 billion (€3.5 billion) offshore wind fund with Japanese utility Tokyo Gas earlier this month.
The Walney Extension wind project came online in 2018 and is split between the 329MW Walney Extension East and 330MW Walney Extension West wind farms, located around 19km from shore off the coast of Walney Island in the Irish Sea, west of Cumbria.
Both wind farms were developed by Danish utility Ørsted, which owns 50% stakes in them.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.