Total and Iberdrola form joint venture for Danish offshore wind market

French multinational energy company Total has partnered with Spanish utility Iberdrola to develop plans for an offshore wind farm in Denmark. The two have formed a 50/50 joint venture which has been pre-qualified by the Danish Energy Agency to submit a bid for the Thor offshore wind farm in the Danish North Sea. Thor will be one of the largest offshore windfarms in the world with a capacity between 800 MW-1,000MW. Key facts about the wind farm:

• Thor will be connected to the grid between the year 2025 and 2027.
• The Danish Energy Agency expects to conclude the tendering process with final bids in Q4 2021.
• The Danish Energy Agency is expected to announce the winner of the tender by the end of 2021.

Martin Rune Pedersen, country chair for Total in Denmark, said: "Total has a strong ambition to reach net-zero by 2050 together with society and to play a major role in the energy transition in Europe. Our participation in the Thor tender is in line with this ambition as it underpins our desire to support the energy transition in Denmark, where we build on more than half a century of Danish offshore operational experience being a reliable energy partner to Denmark." Total plans to have 40% of its sales coming from renewables by 2050. The company's energy generation portfolio reached 12GW in 2020, with more than 7GW of the capacity being renewables. Total has set a goal to expand its renewables portfolio to 35GW by 2025. Jonathan Cole, Iberdrola's global managing director for offshore wind, adds: "The continued development of offshore wind is vital to deliver a decarbonised world and Thor will be a very important project for Denmark's energy transition. As a global leader in offshore wind, with major projects already operating in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, we look forward to bringing our experience to this exciting new venture." This story was originally published on Power Engineering International