Danish developers Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) have submitted an application to Bangladesh’s Government for the construction of a 500MW wind farm in the Bay of Bengal.
Estimated to cost $1.3bn (€1.16bn), the offshore wind farm would be the first of its kind in the region. CIP and COP stated that local independent power producer Summit Power will join them as a consortium partner for the project.
A preliminary study by the two companies claims that the project could create hundreds of direct and indirect jobs during its construction phase and tens of jobs during its 30-year operational life.
This application follows the joint action plan for the next five years, which was approved by Bangladesh and Denmark in June 2023.
The two countries agreed to cooperate on green and clean technologies and to invest in sustainable development.
The offshore wind farm project will help Bangladesh maximise the utilisation of its coastal resources while supporting the development of a ‘blue economy’.
Recharge quoted COP as saying that it and CIP “are targeting a timeline from in-principle approval to project commissioning potentially as short as approximately five years, which makes this project competitive to Indian offshore wind projects in terms of (commencing operations) timing.”
In March 2022, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources awarded a contract to Blix, in a joint venture with Italian consultant CESI and local company Synotech, to conduct a pre-feasibility and detailed feasibility study on the development of an offshore wind farm.
Also in 2022, the country set a target of generating 5GW of onshore and offshore wind power in the coming decade. The feasibility study is expected to help achieve that target.
