Vattenfall will supply Borealis with 175 GWh a year of hydropower from the Lule River in northern Sweden for ten years. The contract was announced in March 2024, but it had already been running since January. It came three weeks after Borealis signed a wind contract in the same country with a different supplier. The chemicals group is not buying one big block of green power. It is assembling it.
Key takeaways
- Vattenfall signed a 10-year power purchase agreement with Borealis for 175 GWh a year of hydropower in Sweden, announced on 6 March 2024, with supply starting in January 2024 and running until 2034.
- The Vattenfall and Borealis PPA supplies electricity from Vattenfall's hydropower plants along the Lule River in northern Sweden to Borealis' operations in Stenungsund.
- The Vattenfall hydropower PPA is expected to cut about 6,800 tonnes a year of Scope 2 carbon emissions from Borealis' Stenungsund facility.
- The agreement helps Borealis source over 40 percent of the electricity for its Polyolefins and Base Chemicals operations from renewable sources ahead of schedule, towards a target of 100 percent by 2030.
- Enerdatics records 33 PPAs in Sweden announced between January 2023 and December 2024, and none of them carries a disclosed tariff.
Why would a chemicals company buy hydropower rather than new wind or solar?
Because hydropower delivers when the plant needs it. A chemicals site like Stenungsund runs around the clock. Wind and solar produce when the weather allows, so a buyer relying on them still needs other power to fill the gaps. Hydropower from reservoirs and river systems can be dispatched far more steadily, which makes a hydro contract closer to the shape of an industrial load.
The trade-off is additionality, the question of whether a contract causes new renewable capacity to be built. The Lule River plants are existing assets. Borealis is buying output that was already being generated, rather than underwriting a new project. That matters less for Scope 2 accounting, which is the measure the deal is designed to move, than it does for claims about adding clean power to the grid.
Borealis had already added wind three weeks earlier. On 15 February 2024 it signed a ten-year wind PPA with Axpo for the Lake Wind project in Sweden. Hydro for steadiness, wind for volume: the two contracts do different jobs.
What does 175 GWh a year actually cover?
Over the full ten-year term the contract delivers 1,750 GWh. The expected cut of about 6,800 tonnes a year of Scope 2 emissions implies an avoided emissions factor of roughly 39 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. Scope 2 emissions are those that come from purchased electricity, as opposed to fuel burned on site.
That is a modest figure per unit of power, which reflects the low-carbon electricity the contract replaces. For Borealis the point is less the tonnage than the share. The contract helps it pass 40 percent renewable electricity for its Polyolefins and Base Chemicals businesses ahead of plan, on the way to 100 percent by 2030.
Why did the contract start before it was announced?
The PPA began in January 2024, about two months before it was made public on 6 March. Leap records the start date and the announcement date separately. The commercial relationship and the publicity are two different events.
The early start also means Borealis booked the emissions benefit from the first month of 2024. For a company reporting progress against a 2030 target, a full calendar year of contracted renewable supply is worth more than a part-year.
Enerdatics' data shows how little Swedish PPA pricing ever reaches the public. Leap records 33 PPAs in Sweden announced between January 2023 and December 2024, and not one discloses a tariff. Four of the 33 are hydropower contracts: Uniper's 15-year deal with Talanx for 5.3 TWh in June 2023, Fortum's 13-year contract with Hydro Energi in October 2023, this ten-year Vattenfall and Borealis agreement, and Uniper's five-year deal with Deutsche Bahn for four run-of-river plants in April 2024. Across Europe, Leap records 16 hydropower PPAs in the same period, and 14 of them have an industrial company as the buyer.
What does the deal signal for industrial power buying in the Nordics?
It signals that heavy industry is building portfolios of power contracts rather than signing single deals. Borealis now has hydro from Vattenfall and wind from Axpo, both in Sweden, both for ten years. Other Swedish industrial buyers are doing the same: Stegra signed supply contracts with both Uniper and Axpo in November 2024, for 6 TWh and 2.25 TWh.
It also signals the role hydropower plays in that stack. Hydro contracts in Leap's European set are almost all with industrial buyers, and their terms range from five to 15 years in Sweden alone. They are the baseload layer. Wind and solar contracts sit on top to add volume. The way Axpo supplies Borealis with wind power from farms it does not own, and the way Renewable Power Capital split a 553 MW Swedish wind cluster among four buyers, show how varied that top layer has become.
For Vattenfall, the contract converts part of its existing hydro output into a decade of contracted sales to a single customer. For Borealis, the next step is the hardest: moving from just over 40 percent to 100 percent by 2030 means contracting the rest of its renewable supply within six years.
Frequently asked questions
What did Vattenfall and Borealis agree? Vattenfall signed a 10-year PPA with Borealis, announced on 6 March 2024, to supply 175 GWh a year of hydropower from its Lule River plants in northern Sweden to Borealis' Stenungsund operations from January 2024 until 2034.
How much will the PPA reduce Borealis' emissions? The PPA is expected to cut about 6,800 tonnes a year of Scope 2 carbon emissions from Borealis' Stenungsund facility, or about 68,000 tonnes over the ten-year term.
What price is Borealis paying Vattenfall? The price has not been disclosed. Enerdatics records 33 PPAs in Sweden announced in 2023 and 2024, and none carries a disclosed tariff.
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