EGEB: Coal-dependent Poland and Orsted to build Baltic offshore wind farms

• Poland’s largest utility will jointly develop two offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea with Orsted.
• Why is Wood Mackenzie shutting down Greentech Media, a valuable source of green energy news?
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Poland’s offshore wind plan with Orsted

PGE, Poland’s state-owned public power company and the largest power group, and Danish wind giant Orsted finalized a deal yesterday to jointly develop two offshore wind projects in the Baltic Sea – 1.5 GW Baltica 2 and 1 GW Baltica 3 – a combined capacity of 2.5 gigawatts. PGE and Orsted will form a 50/50 joint venture, and the two projects could provide electricity to 4 million households

PGE currently generates most of its electricity from coal but plans to have at least 6.5 GW in offshore wind energy capacity by 2040. Baltica 3 is the more advanced of the two projects and could become operational in 2026, according to offshorewind.biz.

PGE chief executive Wojciech Dabrowski said:

Offshore wind energy is a great opportunity for the Polish economy and Polish entrepreneurs.

The potential of offshore energy in the Baltic Sea is estimated at around 11 GW by 2040, and the estimated total value of investments in offshore wind projects is up to 160 billion zlotys ($43 billion).

Poland was the only EU member to not commit to net zero by 2050 in 2019 but is increasingly turning to wind power in an attempt to shift away from coal. Electrek wrote about Poland’s pivot away from coal in September 2020.

Orsted Executive Vice President Martin Neubert said:

Poland is emerging as the front runner in offshore wind in the Baltic Sea, and we are very excited to enter the Polish market with this joint venture.

Wood Mac shutters Greentech Media

Things have increasingly gotten really exciting on the green energy reporting beat – my inbox is more full of announcements than ever, and every day, there’s a new event or innovation announcement.

So why is global energy consultancy group Wood Mackenzie shutting down the excellent green energy website Greentech Media in the middle of March? Wood Mackenzie sends me just as many press releases about green energy as anyone else.

Other climate and green energy reporters are wondering the same. Alexander Kaufman from the Huffington Post asks:

Greentech Media, a cleantech news, analysis and events business, was acquired by Wood Mackenzie for approximately $40 million in 2016. Energy Transition Now published Wood Mackenzie’s statement, which is kind of a non-answer:

As part of the final integration of GTM within Wood Mackenzie, we have taken the decision to retire the GTM and GTM² news sites. We will cease publishing new editorial and news content on the sites from March and all impacted subscribers will be contacted. We know this will be disappointing news for many loyal GTM subscribers and we thank them for their readership over the last decade. We will continue to expand and grow the popular Energy Gang and GTM podcasts and Greentech events, as part of Wood Mackenzie.

Some on Twitter are speculating that it’s Wood Mac’s connections to oil and gas:

PVBuzz rightly states that “This a huge blow to the industry, considering that we are in the midst of a transition toward cleantech and renewables.” It also speculates that it might just be a pure business decision:

But seeing that Wood Mackenzie will continue to expand and grow the popular Energy Gang and GTM podcasts and Greentech events, this might be a business decision geared towards focusing on what works best and is profitable.

We at Electrek are extremely sorry to see this happen. We have great respect for the journalists at Greentech Media and shall miss their expertise and shared goal of spreading awareness about our sector.