Spanish developer BlueFloat Energy and its consortium partners Energy Estate and Elemental Group have moved to build a 900 MW offshore wind farm in New Zealand.
The consortium, formed last year with Australia’s Energy Estate and New Zealand’s Elemental Group, is proposing a fixed bottom project 22 km off South Taranaki – the first of four offshore wind projects planned by the consortium in Aotearoa with the potential of up to 5 GW of capacity.
The planned site covers around 230 sq km and sits beyond the 12-mile nautical zone and outside the boundaries of the West Coast North Island Marine Mammal Sanctuary and the sensitive ecosystem of the Patea Reef.
The developers said the project should create at least 600 jobs in construction, operations and maintenance and to create further employment opportunities throughout the supply chain.
The wind farm, which could power nearly 440,000 homes, is currently in the feasibility stage, with construction anticipated to start before 2030.
Earlier this year, Danish renewables developer Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) teamed up with NZ Super Fund to build the first giga-scale project in the South Taranaki Bight off Aotearoa. The partners said they expected the project could be brought online as a 1GW array as early as the end of the decade.
