Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor has bought into three proposed offshore wind farms in New South Wales as part of its plans to shift to renewables and become a net zero energy company by 2050.
The deal has been struck with Australian developer OceanEx, which is looking to develop three offshore wind projects – each of up to 2GW – off the coast of Newcastle, the Illawarra and Eden. A fourth Oceanex project proposal at Ulladulla appears to have been de-prioritised.
Equinor is the latest – and one of the biggest – international energy giants to have declared its hand in the nascent offshore wind industry, which has now become one of the biggest games in town, simply because of the scale of the individual projects and the enthusiasm shown by state and federal governments.
Other major players in, or looking at, the local market include Ørsted, Iberdrola, Shell, Copenhangen Infrastructure Partners, Macquarie’s Corio, DP Energy, and others.
Equinor is huge. It accounts for more than 70 per cent of Norway’s oil production, but it is also increasingly involved in offshore wind as it looks to gradually decarbonise its operations.
It operates the Sheringham Shoal, Dudgeon and Hywind projects and its current projects include Dogger Bank in the UK, which will be the world’s largest wind project. The 30MW Hywind project is the world’s first floating offshore wind project.
In 2021 Equinor operated just 700MW of net renewables capacity but plans to grow this to 16GW by 2030, with two-thirds of this coming from offshore wind.
OceanEx was created by two of the founders of the Star of the South project in Gippsland, widely regarded as the most advanced project in the country, and in what will be Australia’s first designated offshore wind zone.
The Hunter and Illawarra regions of NSW are expected to be the next two offshore wind zones to be declared, and the NSW government this week noted that 12GW of 17GW of proposed capacity in a new renewable energy zone in the Illawarra had been from offshore wind project proposals.
OceanEx says that once the relevant declared areas have been announced by the Commonwealth Government, the two companies intend to submit feasibility licence applications for offshore wind acreage in these regions.
Those feasibility studies are big deals, and will cost around $200 million each, hence the need for a big-pocketed partner in the project.
“Australia has set a net-zero target by 2050 and has signalled a strong desire to accelerate renewable energy as part of its energy mix,” Lars Johannes Nordli, Equinor’s vice president of renewables business development in the Asia Pacific, said in a statement.
“Assessing renewable opportunities in Australia supports our strategy as a global offshore wind major to build scale in core areas and secure growth options in attractive new markets early.”
Oeanex CEO Andy Evans says Equinor is the ideal partner to progress its projects.
“Our optimism is heightened by detailed stakeholder engagement, strong industrial bases, especially in the Hunter and the Illawarra, and our high-level environmental studies and grid studies which support large new infrastructure uptake and State and Commonwealth policies.”
See RenewEconomy’s Offshore Wind Farm Map of Australia
