Danish pension providers, PensionDanmark and PFA, have united with energy company, SEAS-NVE, to invest in and operate an offshore wind farm.

Located in the North Sea, the ‘energy island’ is called VindØ, and will in the long term be the base for up to 10 gigawatt’s worth of offshore wind turbines, equivalent to approximately 25 traditional offshore wind farms. The investment, inititally DKK 400m, means that the government’s ambition for an ‘energy island’ in the North Sea can be financed entirely without government funding.

VindØ will be an island made up of concrete submersible boxes approximately 100km out in the North Sea, where the power generated can be collected and sent ashore. The distance from the shore ensures that the wind turbines will not be seen from the coast, the consortium said.

The state-owned company Energinet, which owns the overall energy infrastructure in Denmark, can buy part of the island to install transmission cable ashore to ensure public ownership of the transmission network.

PensionDanmark CEO, Torben Möger Pedersen, said: “An energy island in the North Sea is an important part of an economically sound expansion of offshore wind capacity. It also has the potential to become an export product to parts of the world where the expansion of offshore wind will take place in the coming decades. Experience from the North Sea could be disseminated to the rest of the world.”

The partners see the government’s ambition of an energy island as visionary and value-adding for Danish offshore technology. They said the design and construction of VindØ is a large and demanding project, but can be implemented with existing technology.

“Denmark is a pioneer in driving the green transition, and it requires significant investments to meet the ambitious goals the government has set. A wind island in the North Sea will add even more momentum to the green transition, while at the same time creating value for Denmark's pension savers. That is why we at PFA are ready, together with the others in the consortium, to lift this historic project and thereby ensure that PFA's 1.3 million customers' savings come out and work in the best possible service," PFA Pension group investment director, Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, said.

The consortium is assisted by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, one of the world's leading green infrastructure investment companies with significant experience from major offshore projects worldwide.

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