EnBW Secures Another Long-Term Power Purchase Agreement for Subsidy-Free He Dreiht

German chemicals company Evonik has signed a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with EnBW for electricity generated at the 900 MW He Dreiht offshore wind farm in the German North Sea.

The PPA provides Evonik with 100 MW of electricity per year from He Dreiht, enabling Evonik to cover around a quarter of its electricity needs in Europe with renewable energy from 2026 on.

EnBW will supply the green electricity to Evonik over a period of 15 years.

Since chemical production requires a constant energy supply, Evonik will compensate for fluctuations of the wind energy feed-in through its own balancing group management.

”Together with EnBW, we are accelerating the implementation of our ambitious sustainability strategy. We are becoming less dependent on fossil fuels and their price fluctuations,” said Christian Kullmann, CEO of Evonik.

”Clearly, the less fossil and more green energy we use, the better the future opportunities for our German and European sites will be.”

Evonik is also working on other agreements for green electricity purchased directly from producers to increase the company’s share of renewable energy usage.

”The green electricity from the new offshore wind farm is a very important lever for our goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Thomas Wessel, responsible for sustainability on Evonik’s Executive Board.

”Today, 27 percent of Evonik’s externally purchased electricity worldwide already comes from renewable sources. Implementing the PPA with EnBW significantly increases this share to more than 40 percent.”

The He Dreiht wind farm will be built about 90 kilometers northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers west of Helgoland. The wind farm will comprise 64 Vestas V236-15.0 MW wind turbines scheduled to start operating at the end of 2025.

In 2017, EnBW won the first tender in Germany with a zero-cent bid and thus initiated a new trend in the offshore market.

The company will make the final investment decision on the offshore wind farm in 2023.

”We can only achieve the energy transition together. PPAs are a tool for this. They help companies to achieve ambitious climate targets and enable developers of renewable energy projects to obtain reliable financing. This way, the economy and the climate both benefit,” said EnBW management board member Georg Stamatelopoulos.

”With Evonik, we have gained another strong partner for our He Dreiht offshore wind farm.”

Back in November 2021, EnBW signed a long-term corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) with Fraport AG which guarantees the publicly listed operator of Frankfurt Airport 85 MW capacity from He Dreiht.