Danish company Vestas will build a factory near the city of Szczecin on Poland’s northern Baltic coast to assemble parts for wind turbines. The plant will supply both the global market and Poland itself, which is preparing to launch its first offshore wind farms.
“Offshore wind has great prospects in Poland, and Vestas is proud to support the country in maximising its opportunities,” said the firm’s chief operating officer, Rahbek Nielsen.
The launch of the project comes after the Danish firm was named as a preferred supplier for the Baltic Power project, a joint initiative by Polish state energy giant Orlen and Canada’s Northland Power to build a wind farm in the Baltic Sea. Vestas will supply 76 turbines with a capacity of 15 MW each.
#Vestas to establish a new assembly factory in Szczecin, Poland, near the Baltic Sea. The factory will assemble nacelles and hubs for the V236-15.0 MW™ and create between 600 and 700 direct jobs.
Learn more: https://t.co/bfaZAKI2VI#BalticPower #REPowerEU #PowerTheSolution pic.twitter.com/CNeckrL9tm— Vestas Wind Systems (@Vestas) October 13, 2022
Overall, the plant near Szczecin will produce around 400 turbines a year, said Nils de Baar, Vestas’s president for northern and central Europe, cited by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Once up and running by 2024, it will employ around 700 people directly and, says the firm, also provide “thousands of indirect jobs in the Szczecin area”.
PKN Orlen and the Szczecin and Świnoujście seaports authority earlier this month signed a deal as part of plans for an installation terminal for offshore wind farms linked to the Baltic Power project.
In February, officials announced that two new Spanish-owned factories producing towers for offshore wind turbines would open in Poland.
Although Poland remains the EU’s most coal-dependent country, generating around 70% of its electricity from the fossil fuel, renewables are making up a growing share of its energy mix – 17% last year, up from 7% a decade earlier.
The largest source of green energy has been wind, although so far that has been exclusively onshore. At the beginning of this year, Poland generated a record amount of energy from wind, with turbines meeting around a third of the country’s electricity needs at times.
As well as seeking to develop its first offshore wind farms, the Polish government is also seeking to remove regulations that it introduced in 2016 which significantly reduced new investment in onshore wind.
The Polish government – as well as state-owned and private firms – are also pushing ahead with plans to build the country’s first nuclear power stations.
US President Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry earlier this year praised Poland for “leading the EU in their efforts to diversify energy sources”, including taking steps towards a green energy transformation.
Many environmental groups, however, argue that Poland’s progress has been too slow, and accuse the government of pandering to the politically important coal industry.
Main image credit: Peter Dargatz/ Pixabay (Pixabay Licence)
Peter Kononczuk is senior editor at Notes from Poland. He was previously a journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in London and Warsaw.
