E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon has signed a 10-year corporate power purchase agreement with offshore wind firm Ørsted.
In what has been described as Europe's largest ever offshore wind power purchase deal, Amazon has committed to offtake the output of 250MW from Ørsted's planned 900MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in Germany.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 is expected to become operational in 2025, after Ørsted's final investment decision, expected end of 2021.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 will have a total capacity of 900MW and will be located in the German North Sea adjacent to Ørsted's existing offshore wind farms Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Borkum Riffgrund 2.
"The 250MW CPPA, the largest ever for offshore wind in Europe, will help Amazon achieve their commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040 as set out in their Climate Pledge. This is Ørsted’s second CPPA with Amazon, following the 2016 agreement on the 253MW Amazon Onshore Wind Farm Texas in Scurry County, Texas," Ørsted said
Rasmus Errboe, Senior Vice President, Head of Region Continental Europe at Ørsted Offshore and responsible for Corporate PPAs, said: “We applaud Amazon’s leadership in corporate renewable energy investments which helps drive the green energy transformation forward. This agreement shows that Ørsted is well placed to help corporations with green ambitions act on the global climate challenge.
"The CPPA with Amazon on Borkum Riffgrund 3 will drive this breakthrough zero-subsidy project a step closer towards realization, where it will supply large amounts of clean electricity for Germany’s green transition. Germany remains an attractive market for Ørsted with its recent decision to have 40GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2040.”
"We are proud to work with Ørsted on Amazon’s first offshore wind CPPA, Europe’s largest with 250MW of renewable energy,” said Nat Sahlstrom, Director, Amazon Energy. “The Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm will help toward our goal of powering our operations with 100 percent renewable energy and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.”
With the agreement with Amazon, Ørsted has over the past 12 months signed CPPAs for an accumulated capacity of 1,301MW across its global offshore wind portfolio.
As for other buyers from yet to be build wind farm, Ørsted in December 2019 signed a 10-year corporate power purchase agreement with Covestro, a world-leading supplier of high-performance polymer materials. Under the agreement, Covestro will buy the output of 100MW from Borkum Riffgrund 3.