Eni and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners set sights on Polish offshore wind

Italian oil and gas group Eni and greenfield fund manager Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) have announced plans to extend their partnership for offshore wind in France to Polish seas.

The companies said they intended to apply for seabed permits in Poland’s Baltic Sea in an upcoming auction, with a view to participate in contract for difference (CfD) auctions set to take place in 2025 and 2027.

Eni and CIP have not confirmed how much capacity they hope to build off Poland.

With the implementation of its offshore wind act, Poland has established the condition for the build-out of over 10GW of offshore wind by 2030, Eni and CIP stated.

They pledged to support efforts to “develop a Polish offshore wind industry focusing on the establishment of a local manufacturing set-up and the re-skilling of the existing workforce to boost local employment in this new industry sector”.

Poland currently has no offshore wind farms, but Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office contracted just over 5.9GW of offshore wind in the Baltic through CfDs earlier this year.

“With its very substantial growth potential in renewable energies and power-to-x, Poland is a strategic target market for CIP,” said CIP partner Michael Hannibal. “Poland’s offshore wind plans represent an exciting opportunity for CIP to build on its track-record to deliver low-cost renewable energies while facilitating broad participation of the local economy and society.”

Eni and CIP have previously teamed up in France, where their consortium was one of ten bidding groups pre-selected for a 250MW floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Brittany in September.

Eni aims to achieve over 6GW of renewable installed capacity by 2025 and more than 15GW by 2030. CIP recently unveiled plans to spend €100 billion in green energy before 2030.

The partners are not the only ones looking to develop new offshore wind projects in Poland.

In October, Ørsted announced it was joining forces with privately owned Polish energy producer Ze Pak to participate in the seabed lease auction and, potentially, future CfD tenders.