Greenalia’s CEO, Manuel García, together with other executives of the company, held today a meeting with the President of the Canary Islands Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the Regional Minister of Ecological Transition, José Antonio Valbuena. The meeting was held with the objective of analysing the development progress of the offshore wind farms that the company has in its pipeline on the islands, which total 250 MW through 5 floating offshore installations (Gofio, Dunas, Mojo, Guanche and Cardón).
Greenalia’s strategic objectives include being a leading player in the energy transition and decarbonisation process, a roadmap in which offshore wind plays an essential role. In this context, it considers that the contribution of these five wind farms would represent a unique opportunity for the energy independence of the Canary Islands and the promotion of its industry.
“As the only project in this advanced stage of processing, having positively passed the phase of previous reports and with the possibility of obtaining the Environmental Impact Statement in the coming months, we consider it to be the most mature project in Spain, especially after the moratorium established by the Government in 2021 for new projects”, explained the CEO of the company, who thanked the Government of the islands for the open dialogue to advance a key and common objective, such as the energy independence of the islands and the transition to a system based on renewable energies.
Greenalia expects Gofio Offshore Wind Farm to be the first floating offshore wind farm in Spain and, with this, it will help to advance in the necessary energy transition, which is becoming more urgent after the constant increases in gas prices and the effects of the war in Ukraine, with a high impact on European energy markets. In this respect, Gofio is expected to produce the equivalent of the consumption of 75,000 households, with a net capacity factor of around 60%, a key aspect for the stability of the region’s electricity system. For all these reasons, it considers it to be a potential project to be presented to the Next Generation Funds within the Renewable PERTE.
Greenalia also conveyed to the head of the Canary Islands Government its firm commitment to identifying the largest number of potential companies in the Canary Islands, a section in which it recalled the MOU signed last May with the Canary Islands Maritime Cluster, with which there is a collaboration agreement to address these projects with companies based in the islands and thus strengthen their technological capacity, so that they can establish themselves as a reference in the floating offshore wind sector worldwide and thus be able to internationalise their operations and services.
In this sense, the investment figures stand out, as a total investment is estimated for the Gofio of between 175 and 200 million euros (between 800 and 950 for the 5 wind farms under development in Gran Canaria) of which between 60 and 100 million euros (between 300 and 500 million euros in the case of the 5 projects) is expected for national and Canary Island companies and the mobilisation of some 800-850 jobs (direct and indirect) for each of the 5 projects currently under development.