French energy company ENGIE said Monday it reached an agreement with Swiss asset manager SUSI to help develop what will be one of Norway's largest wind farms.
SUSI, through a renewable energy fund, takes an 80 percent stake in Project Tonstad, a planned 208 megawatt wind farm in southern Norway. The French energy company keeps a 20 percent stake in a 51-turbine facility.
Sandra Roche, the head of ENGIE's regional subsidiary, said the partnership marks a first step for the French company in the Nordic renewable energy market.
"SUSI's investment mandate is dedicated to financing the global energy transition," Marco van Daele, the chief investment officer at SUSI Partners, added in a statement.
The partners said they have a 25-year agreement to sell the power generated from Project Tonstad to Hydro Energi, a subsidiary of Norwegian aluminum producer Hydro. The aluminum company will use wind power at its plants in Norway.
Norway is one of the largest oil and natural gas producers in the world, sitting just behind Russia in terms of supplying the European energy market. Nearly all of its electricity, however, comes from renewable energy resources and hydropower is the main contributor.
The wind component of the renewable power sector is the lowest of all low-carbon resources. In a reflection of a changing energy landscape in Norway, energy major Equinor changed its name from Statoil to remove "oil" from its name. Apart from oil and gas production, Equinor has a major footprint in the global wind power sector.
In May, the Norwegian government proposed funding for studies into carbon capture, transport and storage facilities. Dubbed CCS, the technology is considered a necessary contributor to the global effort to cut emissions.
Project Tonstad will save about 180,000 tons of emissions of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, each year. Across Europe, ENGIE has about 3.4 gigawatts of installed renewable energy.
