Denmark. Ørsted AS

NIB provides the loan to co-finance Ørsted’s investment in the 752 MW Borssele 1 & 2 offshore wind farm in the Netherlands.

The Borssele 1 & 2 wind farms consists of 94 Siemens Gamesa 8MW turbines installed about 22 kilometres off the coast of the Dutch province of Zeeland.

This is a significant project for Ørsted, and one which employs large amounts of Danish and Nordic technology. The turbines, the central part of the plant, were assembled and shipped from Siemens Gamesa in Denmark. The towers and 50% of the transition pieces were also sourced from Denmark. There were also important cable deliveries from Finland.

The wind farm was fully commissioned in December 2020, and in May 2021 Ørsted completed a 50% divestment of the Borssele 1 & 2 Offshore Wind Farm to Norges Bank Investment Management.

Ørsted A/S (previously DONG Energy A/S) is Denmark’s largest energy group focusing on offshore wind power production, where it is the world market leader. In addition, the company is engaged in bioenergy and thermal power, and electricity and gas sales.

Productivity
The project adds significant electricity production capacity for Netherlands and through cross-border interconnections also for surrounding countries, including the Nordic-Baltic countries.

Environment
The added renewable power generation capacity at the Borssele 1 and 2 is in total 752 MW, and the estimated annual power generation approximately 2,650 GWh. This equals to around 705,000 tons of avoided CO₂ emissions a year.

Indicators for the expected impact of the investment:

• Added renewable energy generation: 2,650 GWh/annually
• Added wind energy generation capacity: 752 MW

The main negative environmental impacts of the project include the impact on marine mammals due to underwater noise from piling, and the impact on bats and birds due to wind farm operation. Ørsted has applied comprehensive mitigation measures during the piling works and based on the monitoring results the project is not assessed to have a significant negative impact on harbour porpoises at the population level. To mitigate negative impact on bats and birds, the electricity generation will be curtailed during the migration period of bats and during nights of mass bird migration. The Dutch authorities are studying bird migration further to mitigate the risk to birds.

Two activities associated with the project and outside the scope of the Borssele generation asset constructed and co-owned by Ørsted were also assessed to cause potentially significant negative environmental impacts, including the installation of the power cables from the wind farm to the shore and munitions clearance to remove unexploded ordnance from the project area.

The export cable installation is assessed to have a direct impact on three Natura 2000 sites. Since the cable route crosses a major shipping lane, some sections of the cables had to be buried deep by dredging. A natura assessment was carried out and mitigation measures defined. Considering the mitigation and the fact that the seabed in the area is dynamic and dredging required regularly to maintain the shipping lane, the impact on the protected sites is considered acceptable.

Munitions clearance by detonation carried out by the Dutch authorities caused similar underwater noise impacts as piling and depending on the charge weight of a munition, it may cause significant impact on individual marine mammals.