BP SPENDS £850M ON STAKES IN AMERICAN WIND FARMS

BP has broken into the offshore wind market as it battles to go green.

The oil major has signed an £850m deal with Norway’s Equinor (which is also behind the Arkona wind farm in

the Baltic, pictured) to buy 50pc stakes in two wind farms being developed off the east coast of the US.

BP boss Bernard Looney is kicking off a decades-long strategy to turn it into a green energy producer. He said the deal was an ‘important early step’ in a strategy to increase the power it generates from renewables 20-fold over the next decade.

The farms will be built off of New York and Massachusetts and together could generate 4.4 gigawatts, enough to power more than 2m US homes. Construction has not begun yet.

The companies think Empire Wind, an 80,000-acre project 15 miles from Long Island, will be generating power in the mid-2020s. Beacon Wind, around 20 miles from Nantucket in Massachusetts, could take longer.