RWE signs seven PPAs showing high industrial demand for green power
Pamela Largue
Posted on: 21 February 2024
RWE has signed PPAs with seven major German industrial customers to supply green power from the Kaskasi offshore wind farm.
Energy company RWE has signed Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with seven major German industrial customers to supply green power from the Kaskasi offshore wind farm.
The PPAs were signed between RWE Supply & Trading and DHL Group, Ensinger, Evonik, Infraserv Höchst, thyssenkrupp Steel Europe and Vodafone; a first PPA was already signed with the retail divisions of the Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland) in spring 2023.
Most of the contracts run for ten years, with the first contract starting in 2026.
RWE's 342MW Kaskasi wind farm is located around 35 kilometres off the coast of Heligoland and can supply 400,000 households a year with green electricity.
The wind farm is part of the Heligoland cluster, which also includes the Amrumbank and Nordsee Ost wind farms, Currently RWE has an offshore wind portfolio in Germany of around 1.2GW.
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Clean power for green steel
thyssenkrupp Steel, one of the PPA signatories, issued a statement confirming that the 112GWh per year of clean energy from Kaskasi will supply a direct reduction plant with electrically powered melters at the Duisburg location.
According to the statement: "In conjunction with the two electrically operated melters, the direct reduction plant will be integrated into Europe's biggest iron and steel plant as a technologically new plant combination. The direct reduction plant which is 100% hydrogen-capable produces directly reduced iron (DRI)...The DRI is melted into hot metal using CO2-free electricity in the two identical melters. With a capacity of 2.3 million metric tons of regeneratively produced hot metal per year, up to 3.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions can be avoided annually."
The project forms part of thyssenkrupp Steel's tkH2Steel initiative, which seeks to increase the use of renewable energy to green production and reduce operational footprint.
"Renewable energy is a core element in our transformation strategy alongside the use of regeneratively produced hydrogen – a separate public call for tenders is currently underway for this," explains Dr Arnd Köfler, Chief Technology Officer at thyssenkrupp Steel.
"The cooperation with RWE is the first step towards meeting the renewable electricity requirements in the tkH2Steel project. By concluding this PPA, we are taking one step further on the path to carbon-neutral production."
