The Port of Roenne, located on the Danish island of Bornholm, has started working on an upgrade to meet the upcoming increased demand from the offshore wind sector in the Baltic Sea.
On 29 June, the port said it was advancing its planned future security from the Master Plan 2050 which will begin in 2023, at the earliest, and is planned to be completed in 2025, when the port will get an extra 10 hectares for offshore wind projects.
“It is the port’s plan that the new future security of the port will provide increased area for wind turbine projects in the southern part of the port and will to a greater extent concentrate passenger traffic in the northern part”.
The Port of Roenne is now beginning the regulatory process and, at the same time, initiating a tender round for the project.
“In the next many decades, enormous amounts of offshore wind will be set up all over the world and also here in the Baltic Sea. As a port, we are therefore in the middle of an exciting time and with a unique opportunity to take advantage of Bornholm’s unique position to attract more business and growth to the island” , said Lars Nordahl Lemvigh , CEO of Rønne Havn A/S.
“We have already prepared our port to take on OWE-projects at the port, but we do not have the space to meet the increased interest that will be needed. Therefore, we are now starting a future-proofing of the port, so that within a few years we will be able to handle more and larger wind turbine projects”.
The Port of Roenne started making upgrades to accommodate the offshore wind industry in 2018. The first phase of the port upgrades, completed in 2019, included a 150,000-square-metre expansion, increase of the water depth to 11 metres, new external wave breaker, 300-metre-long multi-purpose terminal, and a heavy duty Ro-Ro rental.
The port is currently serving Parkwind’s Arcadis Ost 1 offshore wind farm, located northeast of the German island of Rügen, as the project’s storage and marshaling port.
The port was also utilised for similar work during the construction of the Danish Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm and was selected last year as the installation port for another German project: Baltic Eagle.
Back in 2020, the Port of Roenne also welcomed Danish Government’s plan to make the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea an energy island, saying that this would have “a great impact on the transport sector and the maritime industry at a whole”.
Last year, the port launched the consortium Bornholm Bunker Hub together with eight international partners including Ørsted, Topsoe and Molslinjen which is working on turning Bornholm into a green filling station of green fuels for ships sailing in the Baltic Sea.
Several days ago, the Port of Roenne announced a new study that will investigate the possibility of using renewable energy from the upcoming Bornholm Energy Island to produce green fuels on Bornholm.
The Power-to-X study is a natural extension of the work on the Bornholm Bunker Hub and as such will investigate how large amounts of green fuel can be sold on Bornholm and whether some fuels can be sold for heavy land transport and industry on the island.