BP plans to have 20 GW of solar and wind generating capacity in its portfolio by 2025 as part of a strategy announced earlier this year. The strategy would see BP with 50 GW in renewable capacity by 2030-a goal that chief executive Bernard Looney has argued was both realistic and achievable.
The company already has 20 GW of capacity under development, according to its executive vice president of gas and low-carbon energy, Dev Sanyal. Finished projects, however, are only about 2.5 GW. Most of the capacity in the pipeline is solar, accounting for 83 percent of the total, due to its faster trip from concept to construction.
In fact, until very recently, BP only had solar capacity in its portfolio. Last week, however, the supermajor announced a $1.1-billion deal with Norway's Equinor for 50 percent of its offshore wind assets in the United States: Empire Wind off Long Island and the Beacon Wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.
Empire Wind alone will have a capacity of 2 GW while Beacon Wind will have a capacity of 2.4 GW. Equinor will remain operator of the assets. For BP, the move is yet another part of its strategy to transform from an oil company into an integrated energy company with a focus on clean energy generation. As part of this transformation, BP will reduce its oil production by as much as 40 percent by 2030.
BP is quite upbeat on renewables. In the 2020 edition of its Energy Outlook, the company forecast that new solar and wind power additions could reach 550 GW over the next 15 years. BP seems set on building a substantial portion of that total and reaping the benefits despite some doubts that it would be able to make returns on renewable energy that are as good as it makes on oil.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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