Danes open €5.5 million tender for environmental studies of new offshore wind areas

The Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet has opened a tender for consultancy services for a number of marine environmental studies for the new areas in the North and Baltic Seas, planned to house up to 7.2 GW of new offshore wind capacity in Denmark.

Energinet is looking for providers of environmental consultancy services through two tender lots, Lot 1 being for the offshore wind area in the North Sea and Lot 2 for the areas identified in the Baltic Sea, with contracts valued at €4 million and €1.5 million, respectively.

In the tender lot for the North Sea work, Energinet states that it also includes an option to undertake marine environmental investigations for a second area with expected commencement in the first quarter of 2024.

Energinet will have the tender open until 6 December, with tenderers able to apply for both lots, but their proposals for each lot must be completely independent of each other. 

The awarded contracts will run for two years.

The new contract notice follows multiple tenders issued so far after Energinet received an order from the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) and the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities in June this year to initiate feasibility studies for the North Sea I (Nordsø I), Kattegat II and Kriegers Flak II areas – which would add a total of 6 GW of offshore wind capacity to the Danish grid – and for the Hesselø offshore wind farm that could have up to 1.2 GW of installed capacity.

As part of the order from the Minister of Climate, Energy and Supply earlier this year, Energinet was instructed to carry out marine environmental studies for the planned offshore wind farms.

A couple of months later, Energinet announced it would start the feasibility studies for the new offshore wind areas.

The studies that the TSO will undertake include seabed investigations, wind and wave measurements, and studies of other environmental conditions that may have an impact on the possibilities to establish offshore wind in the areas.

The four new areas for offshore wind development in Denmark were identified after the Danish Energy Agency carried out fine screening of a number of areas that could potentially host new offshore wind farms, including alternative locations for the Hesselø project whose originally planned site was deemed unsuitable. 

The fine screening concluded that the four areas were suitable for setting up offshore wind farms and shortly after that the Danish political parties signed an agreement on the new location for the Hesselø offshore wind farm, moving the project site to the south of the initially chosen area.

Denmark has set ambitious targets both in terms of offshore wind capacity and energy islands which will accommodate high amount of offshore wind and serve as interconnectors and facilitate Power-to-X capabilities.

In September, Denmark and eight other member countries of the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC) agreed to reach at least 260 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050, representing more than 85 per cent of the EU-wide ambition of reaching 300 GW by 2050.

A month earlier, the country emerged as one of the signatories of an agreement on increasing the amount of offshore wind capacity in the Baltic Sea sevenfold by 2030, increasing the current installed capacity of just under 3 GW to almost 20 GW by that time.

Denmark is also among the signatories of the Esbjerg Declaration, under which it vowed, together with Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, to reach a joint target of at least 65 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and at least 150 GW by 2050.