GreenerTower: Using sustainable steel to make offshore wind farms cleaner

The new GreenerTower revealed by Siemens Gamesa is to be built out of more sustainable steel, allowing the green transition for offshore wind to move even faster

Siemens Gamesa has closed its first order of 36 GreenerTowers with RWE at the 1 GW Thor offshore wind project in Denmark.

Wind power and the future of green energy

With the growth of wind power and renewable energy, there is a need to keep these industries’ carbon footprint as low as possible. Siemens Gamesa believes this is through tower production.

“Offshore Wind already has one of the lowest lifecycle carbon footprints of power generation technologies. However, tower production accounts for around one-third of all wind turbine-related CO2 emissions, ”according to Siemens Gamesa.

Tower production accounts for around one-third of all wind turbine-related CO2 emissions

“Wind power is one of the cornerstones of the green energy transition. With more than 600 GW of new capacity to be installed worldwide in the next five years, it is important for the wind industry to reduce its carbon footprint”, said Maximilian Schnippering, Head of Sustainability.

The need for CO2 reduction

The German company said that this new GreenerTower will ensure a CO2 reduction of at least 63 per cent in the tower steel plates compared to conventional steel.
In their release, the company announced that if all towers installed by the company in one year were exchanged with GreenerTowers, it would equate to removing more than 466,000 cars from the roads in Europe for a year, according to Siemens Gamesa.

Wind power is one of the cornerstones of the green energy transition

Thor offshore wind project

The Thor offshore wind farm is set to supply green electricity to more than one million Danish households.

With a planned capacity of more than 1,000 MW, Thor is Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm to date. Once fully operational, which is planned no later than the end of 2027, the wind farm will be capable of producing enough green electricity to supply the equivalent of more than one million Danish households.

Since 2010, RWE has already completed and now operates the Danish Rødsand 2 offshore wind farm, which is located south of the Danish island of Lolland.