Offshore wind delegation to the Baltic countries & Finland

In 2023 in Finland, the state-owned agency Metsähallitus announced launching 5 competitive tenders for approx. 7,5 GW installed OW capacity in the country’s territorial waters. The first two auctions for approx. 3GW were announced in November 2023. Metsähallitus together with Suomen Hyötytuuli is working on the extension of the Tahkoluoto Demo plant to 500 MW to become operational in 2030. The agency is also conducting early-stage development works on the 2 GW farm near Korsnäs to be operational in 2032, where Vattenfall has been selected as a j.v. partner. Finland’s OW development portfolio exceeds 19 GW. So far, all developments have been bottom-fixed, however, there are floating wind opportunities in the Gulf of Bothnia.

The last years showed an increased pace of development in OW in the Baltic countries. Lithuania launched its first tender for 700 MW in 2023, in which the local Ignitis Renewables partnered with Ocean Winds were the winners. The farm is expected to be fully commissioned by 2030. The second tender for a windfarm seabed site of the same capacity was launched in November this year; winner is to be announced in May 2025. Estonia has a large offshore wind project pipeline (11GW) in four Baltic Sea areas to be awarded to developers through auctions. The first two sites, Liivi 2 and Liivi 1, were put up for auction in Dec. 2023 and in Jan. 2024. The winner of both auctions is Ignitis Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).  In June 2024 Deep Wind Offshore AS won the auction to build 1560 MW in the Saare 2.1 sea area. Latvia is speeding up the work with the necessary legal framework to catch up in OW development with its neighbours. Latvia together with Estonia are working on the ELWIND wind farm project of joint capacity up to 2 GW, planned to be commissioned in 2030.