Poland’s first offshore wind farm begins generating power

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s first offshore wind farm has begun to deliver electricity. Once complete, the facility, known as Baltic Power, will generate 4 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually, enough to meet around 3% of Poland’s demand, powering the equivalent of 1.5 million homes.

The project is part of ambitious plans by Poland to develop wind farms along its Baltic Sea coastline. The government aims for around a fifth of the country’s electricity to come from offshore wind by 2040, as Poland moves away from reliance on coal and towards renewables and nuclear.

💡 Baltic Power będzie produkować energię dla ponad 1,5 mln gospodarstw domowych. To skala porównywalna z łączną liczbą gospodarstw w Warszawie, Poznaniu i Trójmieście. Energia z Bałtyku oznacza więcej czystego prądu w polskim systemie i większą niezależność energetyczną kraju. “This is a technological victory for all those who believed that Poland could be among the leading countries in modern energy,” declared Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a ceremony announcing the first electricity from the Baltic Power facility.

He said that offshore wind would help protect Poland’s energy security and sovereignty by providing power that is “independent of geopolitical turbulence in these highly uncertain times”.

Tusk noted that the energy crises sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Poland and other EU countries stopped importing Russian gas and oil , and the current crisis in the Middle East, which has prevented oil and gas exports from the region, highlight how important it is to have a diverse energy mix.

“Polish wind will blow regardless of what happens in Iran or Moscow,” said Tusk. He also noted that, in the same coastal district where the offshore electricity comes onshore, Poland will soon build its first nuclear power plant as another key component of its energy strategy.

Popłynął pierwszy prąd z naszej morskiej farmy wiatrowej. Polska zwycięża! 🇵🇱 Plans to build offshore wind farms and nuclear power plants were launched under Poland’s former Law and Justice (PiS) administration and have been continued by Tusk’s coalition government, which took power from PiS in December 2023.

Construction of Baltic Power began last year , and 54 turbines have already been installed. The project is a joint venture between Polish state energy giant Orlen – which has long been associated primarily with oil but has moved into greener forms of energy – and Canadian company Northland Power.

Baltic Power is scheduled to be completed by autumn this year, by which time 76 turbines will have been installed, with a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW). Over the coming years, five more wind farms are due to be established in the Polish Baltic, with a combined capacity of just over 6 GW.

Other projects include another by Orlen, called Baltic East ; the Baltic 9 by PGE, another state energy firm; and a project developed by private Polish firm Polenergia and Norway’s Equinor.

In a major development last December, Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office (URE) concluded the country’s first-ever auction for offshore wind power, awarding contracts to three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 gigawatts (GW).

The agreements provide for guaranteed prices for electricity produced from the wind farms for 25 years, with the state making up the costs if prices are lower but receiving excess revenues if they are higher.

Poland has also undertaken major investments in its power grid and other infrastructure to accommodate increased renewable sources , with much of the work funded by billions of euros from the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery funds.

Poland has successfully completed its first auction for offshore wind power. It awarded contracts for three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 GW, making it the largest such auction anywhere in Europe this year The developments are part of a major shift by Poland, begun under PiS and continued by Tusk, to move away from coal, which still accounts for around half of power generation .

In 2023, PiS set out plans for Poland to generate around three quarters of its electricity from zero-emissions sources by 2040, with 51% coming from renewables and 23% from nuclear.

Under a national energy and climate plan approved by the current government last month, it plans by 2040 for Poland to generate 18-21% of power from offshore wind and 22-27% from onshore wind. A further 15-16% will come from nuclear, 14-18% from solar, 7-8% from gas and 0-5% from coal.

Speaking at today’s ceremony alongside Tusk, energy and climate minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska admitted that “offshore [wind] energy is more expensive than onshore wind or photovoltaic [solar] sources, but it competes well with gas and coal”.

Hennig-Kloska previously led efforts by the current government to expand onshore wind power, which had been largely blocked by the former PiS administration . However, a bill intended to loosen the rules for building onshore turbines was vetoed last year by PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki.

Poland's new president has used his veto for the first time, against a bill easing rules for building onshore wind turbines and freezing household electricity prices. He criticised the government for combining the two issues in one piece of legislation Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Orlen (press materials)

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland . He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy , POLITICO Europe , EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna .

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