Windy weather isn’t necessarily bad weather

Wind energy – a core ingredient for decarbonisation

We have a clear goal, to make fossil free living possible within one generation. To reach this target, we need to dramatically increase the generation capacity of our renewable energy sources. Among these, wind energy plays a critical role in reaching the ambitious European and national climate targets, as well as our own. In September 2021, we decided to make our emission reduction targets even bolder to help keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. With this in mind, we are aiming to quadruple our production of wind and solar by 2030.

Today, wind power alone provides 17% of Europe’s electricity with a capacity of 255 GW. To meet the rapidly growing demand, the EU aims to triple this capacity by 2030. As the leading wind energy company in our core markets with more than 50 wind farms in operation, Vattenfall contributes strongly to this growth, for example with Scandinavia’s largest offshore wind farm Danish Kriegers Flak. Inaugurated in 2021, Kriegers Flak will increase Danish wind power by 16% and have a capacity that can power about 600,000 Danish households.

Another example is our largest onshore wind farm in Sweden, Blakliden Fäbodberget, which was inaugurated in 2022. Its 84 wind turbines have an annual output of more than 1 billion kilowatt hours, equivalent to the consumption of around 220,000 Swedish households.

Collaboration is key

To achieve our goal of fossil free living within one generation, we are also collaborating with a wide range of partners and large industrial consumers. One of these partnerships has resulted in the co-development of the wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid together with BASF. Hollandse Kust Zuid will be the world’s largest subsidy-free offshore wind farm once commissioned in 2023.

Offshore wind – the backbone of fossil free hydrogen

Offshore wind-to-hydrogen is an important part of Vattenfall's vision for a fossil free future.

Today, fossil free hydrogen is key to decarbonising energy-intense industries like steel, chemicals and aviation. That’s why Vattenfall is investigating a ground-breaking technology to produce fossil free hydrogen at large offshore wind farms to help these industries lower the CO₂ footprint of their products and services. We believe we have the potential to produce hydrogen from fossil free sources at competitive prices by 2030.

Offshore wind farms are well suited to generate vast amounts of fossil free hydrogen for industrial facilities, thanks to the high number of hours that they run at full load, also known as full-load hours.

Wind power is in it for the long run

Wind power is not only one of the cheapest forms of new energy generation, but it also has a very low carbon footprint. Modern wind farms compensate for their own CO₂ footprint after just one year of their 25 years in operation.

In addition, we are focused on reducing any further environmental impact and have set tough targets for how to deal with wind turbines at the end of their life. 

Floating wind farms – the next big innovation

The next big development in wind energy is floating wind farms. As the name suggests, these are wind turbines whose foundations aren’t fixed to the seabed. We are exploring this innovative technology in Scotland to unlock deep waters for renewable electricity production.