Ørsted, BASF sign PPA for 186 MW of Borkum Riffgrund 3

Denmark’s Ørsted A/S (CPH:ORSTED) has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for a portion of its 900-MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind project in Germany with BASF SE (ETR:BAS), the companies said today.

Under what is the longest corporate PPA for offshore wind, the German chemicals company will buy the output of 186 MW from the wind farm at a fixed price.

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Located in the German North Sea, Borkum Riffgrund 3 recently got planning approval from the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and is expected to be fully operational in 2025.

The PPA with BASF will help Ørsted take final investment decision on the zero-subsidy project, which is expected towards the end of the year. The deal adds to PPAs for 450 MW of the wind farm’s capacity previously secured by the Danish energy group, including a 250-MW PPA with Amazon.com Inc.

For BASF the offtake deal will help it meet the increased electricity needs of low-emission technologies and support its objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

Ørsted chief executive Mads Nipper urged Germany to make more seabed available for offshore wind projects and raise its ambitions for deploying large-scale renewables like offshore wind.

The companies said they will look into how they can work together in the future to contribute to emission reductions in the chemical industry.

BASF recently closed the purchase of a 49.5% stake in the 1.5-GW Hollandse Kust Zuid (HKZ) offshore wind farm project in Dutch waters from Vattenfall AB. BASF will use electricity from HKZ for several of its production sites in Europe on a PPA basis.