Fraport AG, the publicly listed operator of Frankfurt Airport, and EnBW, the energy provider headquartered in Karlsruhe, have concluded a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) for the supply of electricity generated by offshore wind turbines. The long-term contract guarantees Fraport 85 megawatts (MW) from the 900 MW EnBW He Dreiht wind farm in the North Sea off the coast of Germany. The CPPA comes into force in the second half of 2026, and has a term of 15 years.
With the expiry of the previous subsidies under the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), PPAs are becoming a key element of the energy transition: They provide developers of renewable energy projects with a reliable source of funding while helping purchasers to quickly achieve ambitious climate targets. “Long-term power purchase agreements are a market response to advancing the energy transition even without government support,” explained EnBW CEO Frank Mastiaux. “PPAs equally benefit purchasers, project developers and the climate. For us, they are the key between renewables-generated power and our major customers.”
The CPPA becomes operational in the summer of 2026. It will enable Fraport to transition a substantial portion of electricity consumption at its Frankfurt Airport home base to green energy. Fraport CEO Dr. Stefan Schulte said the agreement marked a key milestone in Fraport’s ongoing decarbonization strategy: “Renewables such as wind and solar are the focus of our climate strategy. They provide the firm foundations for a comprehensive package of measures to systematically reduce our CO2 emissions. Our clearly defined goal is to make Frankfurt Airport carbon-free by 2045. The power sourced from this new offshore wind park will play a central role. As an airport operator, we are especially reliant on a dependable, stable source of power that can be scaled up to meet our growing needs. In EnBW, we have found a strong partner. Compared with the conventional energy sources on which we have previously depended, the new CPPA unlocks potential savings of up to 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.”
85 megawatts of green energy from the North Sea
EnBW initiated a new trend in the offshore market with the He Dreiht project in 2017. For the first time in an auction in Germany, the company secured the rights to build the 900 MW wind farm by bidding a subsidy amount of zero cents per kWh. Located about 90 kilometers northwest of the island of Borkum and about 110 kilometers west of Heligoland, He Dreiht is scheduled to go into operation in 2025. The investment decision is planned for 2023. The wind farm with around 60 turbines is currently one of the largest energy transition projects in Europe. It will also be the first to use turbines with a capacity of 15 megawatts each. By way of comparison, Germany’s first offshore wind farm, EnBW Baltic 1 built in 2011, has a capacity of 2.3 megawatts per turbine.
