German multinational energy company RWE is joining with France’s TotalEnergies to jointly develop two large-scale offshore wind projects off the German coast. The companies on October 7 announced that TotalEnergies is acquiring a 50% equity stake in the two projects from RWE, which was awarded the sites in Germany’s latest offshore wind auction in August of this year. The companies at that time had said they would look at joint development of 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.
This map shows the location of two major offshore wind projects being developed by RWE and TotalEnergies off the coast of Germany. Source: RWE The sites announced Monday are located about 70 miles northwest of Borkum, an island off the coast of Germany. Identified as N-9.1 and N-9.2, each will designed with total generation capacity of 2 GW. “We are delighted to welcome TotalEnergies onboard 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 drive the growth of offshore wind energy to accelerate the energy transition in Germany and beyond. Our RWE teams will bring their many 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 key player in renewables and our partner in 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 provide green electrons to decarbonize the country’s electricity and industry.” RWE at present has four large offshore wind farms under construction, including the Sofia offshore wind farm (1.4 GW) in the UK, and the Thor offshore project (1.1 GW) in Denmark. It also is building the 795-MW OranjeWind offshore wind farm in the Netherlands together with TotalEnergies. Other installations currently being built include the Nordseecluster, which has a total capacity of 1.6 GW. Nordseecluster is located north of the island of Juist in Germany. RWE has said it wants to to triple its global offshore wind capacity from 3.3 GW today to 10 GW by 2030. —Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).
