“We are going to invest around 1,500 million euros in renewable projects by 2025, this is EDP's share, so Ocean Winds, as a whole, has our partner [Engie] who then invests the other half and this can represent up to around of 17 GW, 17,000 megawatts, of renewable capacity in the ocean", the executive president, Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade, explained to Lusa.
Ocean Winds is a joint venture created by EDP and French company Engie, in July 2020, whose purpose is to invest in wind projects globally. This investment is foreseen in the company's business plan until 2025, but, according to the executive president, the possibility of going “beyond” is being analysed, since Ocean Winds “has already managed to achieve what was foreseen in the business plan”.
“[Offshore wind] is clearly one of the areas that is growing the most, it is becoming more difficult to make onshore wind, even for environmental reasons and, sometimes due to some resistance by local communities, and in this sense offshore has much more potential”, said the EDP leader.
Of the total forecasted offshore wind capacity, around five to seven GW of projects are already in operation or under construction by 2025, for example in Scotland or Belgium.