Starting in 2024, Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) will be powered by electricity from RWE Renewable’s Amrumbank West offshore wind farm. The relevant power purchase agreement (PPA) has been signed by Deutsche Bahn and RWE Supply & Trading, RWE’s trading subsidiary. The PPA will begin in 2024 and run until 2039.
Deutsche Bahn is already the largest consumer of green electricity in Germany. By 2038, all of the electricity powering Deutsche Bahn’s trains is to come from 100% renewables; the rate is currently 61%. Green electricity from RWE will make a key contribution here. The company’s hydropower stations have been providing around 880 gigawatt hours (GWh) of green electricity a year to Deutsche Bahn since 2014. In 2019, RWE closed a PPA with Deutsche Bahn to supply electricity from its Nordsee Ost offshore wind farm, also close to Heligoland.
Andree Stracke, Managing Director of RWE Supply & Trading, is delighted: “We were already supplying Deutsche Bahn with green electricity today. This additional agreement will help our long-standing partner to achieve their ambitious climate protection goals. We are increasingly supplying and shaping green electricity for our industrial customers in Europe.”
Amrumbank West is located around 30 km off the coast of Heligoland and has a total of 80 wind turbines with an installed capacity of 288 megawatts. It has been in operation since 2015. The supply volume to Deutsche Bahn requires the capacity of 18 wind turbines, or around one quarter of the annual generation capacity of the offshore wind farm. That’s a total of around 260 GWh. This is enough to supply around 300,000 households with clean energy every year.
