Italian oil supermajor Eni has entered the UK offshore wind market with the acquisition of a 20 per cent in the first two phases of the Dogger Bank project from SSE Renewables and Equinor.
The Dogger Bank windfarm is being built in three phases – A, B and C – each of which will have a generation capacity of 1.2GW.
The first two will be powered by 190 of the 13MW version of GE Renewable Energy’s new Haliade-X turbine, which stands 260 metres tall and has 107-metre long blades.
The construction of Dogger A and B, which are scheduled for completion in 2023 and 2024 respectively, is expected to cost £6 billion in total.
Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi said: “For Eni, entering the offshore wind market in Northern Europe is a great opportunity to gain further skills in the sector thanks to the collaboration with two of the industry’s leading companies, and to make a substantial contribution to 2025 target of 5 GW of installed capacity from renewables, an intermediate step towards the more ambitious target of zero net direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 2050”.
The deal comes after SSE and Equinor made a final investment decision on the first two phase of the project last week.
Dogger Bank was originally developed by the Forewind consortium – made up of SSE, Equinor (then Statoil), RWE and Statkraft – as eight 1.2GW phases, although half of these were eventually abandoned. Statkraft was bought out by SSE and Equinor in 2017, whilst RWE is building the fourth phase separately under the name Sofia.