Chemicals firm BASF to buy German offshore wind output from Ørsted

Chemicals producer BASF has agreed to buy output from a 186MW portion of Ørsted’s planned 900MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 Borkum Riffgrund 3 (900MW) Offshorenorth-west of Borkum, Germany, Europe Click to see full details offshore wind farm in the German North Sea.

The deal will help Ørsted — which had also signed PPAs for Borkum Riffgrund 3 with German supermarket chain Rewe, retail giant Amazon and German chemicals firm Covestro, before agreeing to sell a 50% stake in the project to investment firm Glennmont Partners  — reach a final investment decision on the project. It expects to reach financial close by the end of 2021.

Germany-based BASF has previously bought into Vattenfall’s Hollande Kust Zuid wind farm and is due to buy output from a planned 2GW offshore wind farm being developed by RWE.

Ørsted secured the rights to Borkum Riffgrund 3 with zero-subsidy bids in Germany’s offshore wind tenders in 2017 and 2018. Borkum Riffgrund 3 was originally three separate sites that Ørsted decided to combine into one project to make the most of project synergies and scale. 

It recently secured planning approval for the 900MW project from  German maritime and hydrographic agency BSH.

Borkum Riffgrund 3 is due to consist of 83 of Siemens Gamesa’s SG 11.0-200 DD turbines.

Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper added: “​​Countries like Germany must respond to the enormous demand for renewable electricity by urgently making more seabed available for offshore wind projects and by increasing its ambitions for deploying large-scale renewable energy sources such as offshore wind power. 

“Offshore wind in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea is an abundant source of green electricity that can be unleashed through clearer and more ambitious policies.”