RWE, Hellenic Petroleum announce cooperation to build, operate offshore wind farms in Greek waters

German multinational RWE and Hellenic Petroleum Holdings, the biggest petro-chemical concern in Greece, on Monday announced cooperation aimed to “explore offshore wind opportunities” in Greek waters.

The agreement will be implemented by each company’s subsidiaries, RWE Renewables Gmbh and HELPE Renewables SA, respectively.

Corresponding terms of the 50-50 partnership were recently signed by the top managements of each company.

Developing, constructing and operating offshore wind farms off the Greece’s numerous coasts is the objective, and comes in light of the Greek government’s target of two gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity in operation by 2030 – both for fixed-bottom and floating projects.

“Cooperation with RWE Renewables, a global leader in offshore wind, constitutes an important element in the implementation of our ‘Vision 2025’ strategic transformation process of the Group. In particular, this initiative is expected to make a significant contribution to the realization of the Group’s strategic target of 2 GW of installed renewables capacity by 2030,” George Alexopoulos, an executive member of the BoD of Hellenic Petroleum Holdings and CEO of HELPE Renewables, said.

According to CEO Wind Offshore of RWE Renewables Sven Utermöhlen, Greece’s “…excellent wind resource in combination with its long coast line result in a vast potential for offshore wind developments, which makes us confident that the Greek offshore wind industry will gain real momentum. The complementary nature of our partnership with Hellenic Petroleum is the key to developing a value proposition that accelerates the offshore wind build-out off the Greek coast.”