Covestro has signed a contract with RWE to buy offshore wind power for its plastics plant in Antwerp. The contract runs for five years, from 2026 to 2030, and replaces an existing agreement that ends in 2025. Five years is short for a renewable power contract. In Belgian offshore wind it is close to the norm.
Key takeaways
- Covestro signed a 5-year power purchase agreement with RWE, announced on 20 February 2024, to buy electricity from offshore wind turbines in the North Sea for its production site in Antwerp, Belgium, from 2026 to 2030.
- The Covestro and RWE PPA replaces a current agreement that expires at the end of 2025.
- Covestro expects the RWE contract to help raise the renewable share of its power to 60 percent and save 103,000 tons of CO2.
- Covestro's Antwerp site produces polycarbonate, a high-performance plastic used in car headlights, electrical and electronic components, LED lights and medical technology.
- Enerdatics records three offshore wind PPAs in Belgium announced in 2023 and 2024, with terms of five, five and four years, while Belgian onshore wind PPAs with a disclosed term run for ten or twelve years.
Why is the Covestro contract only five years long?
Because it reads as a supply contract rather than a contract that gets a new wind farm built. Leap's record does not state Covestro's reasons, but the structure points that way, and the distinction changes what the contract is for.
A long PPA, ten or fifteen years, usually exists to finance a new wind or solar farm. Lenders want a buyer locked in for most of the loan's life. The buyer gets a price fixed far into the future in return for helping the project happen. A short PPA on existing turbines does a different job. It is a hedge. The buyer fixes a share of its power cost for a few years and the seller sells part of its output at a known price.
Leap's record does not name the specific wind farm or the contracted volume, only that the power comes from offshore wind turbines in the North Sea. What it does show is continuity: the contract starts in 2026, takes over from an agreement ending in 2025, and runs only until 2030. That is the shape of a renewal, not of a financing.
How does the RWE deal compare with Covestro's other contracts?
It is the shortest Covestro contract Leap records. Covestro has a long history of renewable power agreements, and most are long-dated.
In 2019 Covestro signed a 10-year PPA with Orsted for 100 MW from the Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in Germany. In 2021 it signed a 15-year contract with EnBW for 63 MW from the Weesow-Willmersdorf solar project in Germany, and a 39 MW wind contract with ENGIE in Belgium. In June 2023 it signed a 15-year virtual PPA for 90 MW from Orsted's Mockingbird solar project in Texas. In July 2024, after the RWE deal, it signed a 10-year contract with bp for the Barrica solar project in Spain.
Set against those, the RWE contract stands out. Most of Covestro's other contracts run for ten or fifteen years. For its Belgian site, renewing an existing supply arrangement, it has chosen five. The two strategies sit side by side: long contracts that bring new projects to life, and short ones that keep a site supplied at a known price.
Why are Belgian offshore wind PPAs short?
Leap's records do not give a reason, but the pattern is consistent. The Belgian offshore contracts Leap records sell slices of output from North Sea wind farms to corporate buyers, rather than acting as the contract that underpins construction. ENGIE's two C-Power contracts, for example, split a single offshore wind farm among six buyers over two years.
Enerdatics' data shows the split clearly. Enerdatics records 10 wind PPAs in Belgium announced in 2023 and 2024. Three are offshore. ENGIE's October 2023 contract with five corporate buyers, Agristo, Aluminium Duffel, Pfizer, Proximus and Umicore, for 70 MW of the C-Power offshore wind farm runs for five years. Covestro's contract with RWE runs for five. ENGIE's September 2024 contract with Atlas Copco for 5.9 MW of C-Power runs for four. On the onshore side, every contract with a disclosed term runs for ten years or more: Borealis with Axpo for ten, and Google with Luminous for twelve. None of the 10 discloses a tariff.
What does the deal signal for Belgian industry?
It signals that large industrial sites in Belgium are treating offshore wind contracts as rolling supply rather than one-off commitments. Covestro is renewing, not starting. The five-year term gives it a fixed price for part of its power through 2030 and leaves it free to renegotiate as the market and its own needs change.
RWE has followed a different pattern in Germany. At its Kaskasi offshore wind farm, it signed four separate corporate contracts within eleven months, all for ten years, as Enerdatics explained in the timeline of RWE's Kaskasi contracts. A ten-year contract on an operating German wind farm and a five-year contract for Belgian supply show that tenor depends on the market and the buyer, not only on whether the asset is new.
Other chemicals groups are signing Belgian wind contracts too. Borealis signed a 10-year onshore wind contract with Axpo in Belgium in the same month, alongside one in Sweden, as covered in how Axpo sells Borealis wind power from farms it does not own. Covestro's own long-dated contracts include the Mockingbird solar project in Texas, where it is one of several corporate buyers.
Frequently asked questions
What did Covestro sign with RWE? A 5-year power purchase agreement, announced on 20 February 2024, for offshore wind electricity from the North Sea to supply Covestro's production site in Antwerp, Belgium, from 2026 to 2030.
What does the RWE contract replace? An existing power agreement that expires at the end of 2025. The new contract takes over from 2026.
What will the contract do for Covestro's emissions? Covestro expects it to help raise its renewable power share to 60 percent and save 103,000 tons of CO2.
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