Total and EnBW big winners in German offshore wind auction as RWE withdraws
Total and EnBW big winners in German offshore wind auction as RWE withdraws | Windpower Monthly
The two winning bids were submitted by Offshore Wind One — a consortium led by French oil and gas giant Total Energies and German energy firm RWE — and German utility EnBW, the BNetzA said on Friday afternoon (21 June).
Offshore Wind One made a successful bid of more than €1.3 billion for the rights to develop a 1.5GW wind farm in the N-11.2 zone, a 156km2 area around 120km northwest of Heligoland in the German North Sea.
'Not economically viable'
However, RWE announced on the same day the results of the tender were published that it was withdrawing from the consortium, leaving Total Energies to develop the project on its own.
“We can confirm that we were part of a bidding consortium [Offshore Wind One GmbH] which we are now withdrawing from at short notice… The bid levels for the two sites do not meet our criteria for economically viable investments,” a spokesperson for RWE told Windpower Monthly.
“We are going to realise our 1.6GW Nordseecluster, for which we have already taken FID. RWE does not have to make any lease payments to the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) for the Nordseecluster sites,” they added.
Total Energies, via Offshore Wind One, will pay the German government €196 million by June next year for marine conservation and the promotion of environmentally friendly fishing.
“An annual contribution of €88 million will also be paid to the electricity transmission system operator in charge of connecting the project, for a term of twenty years starting from the commissioning of the site,” Total Energies stated.
EnBW wins 1GW
Meanwhile, EnBW won the rights to build a 1GW offshore wind farm in the same region of the German North Sea at the N-12.3 site, with a bid of €1.05 billion.
EnBW is already developing the 960MW He Dreiht offshore wind farm in the German North Sea. The utility said it planned to sell the majority of the electricity produced by the new 1GW wind farm to industrial customers through future power purchase agreements.
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.