DENMARK – Danish pension funds Industriens Pension and PKA are each investing DKK750m (€100m) in a planned offshore wind park off the Jutland coast.

Under the terms of the deal, each of the two labour-market pensions institutions will take a 22.5% stake in the planned Butendiek Offshore Wind Park – to be built 32km away from the coast of the island of Sylt, near the Danish-German border.

Laila Mortensen, managing director of Industriens Pension, said: "This investment will allow us to secure a stable return for our pension scheme members for many years into the future."

At the same time, it was satisfying to be involved in creating Danish jobs and contributing to the conversion to sustainable energy, she said.

Peter Damgaard Jensen, managing director of PKA – which manages five pension funds in the social and healthcare sectors – said his organisation had increased its focus on infrastructure investments significantly.

"We have already had good experiences with the Anholt offshore wind park, and we are taking the next step with Butendiek," he said.

The total construction budget is DKK10bn.

Construction work is scheduled to start in 2014, and the wind park is expected to produce electricity from 2015, PKA said.

The power plant will consist of 80 3.6MW Siemens wind turbines with a total capacity of 288MW, and will generate electricity corresponding to the annual usage of 370,000 households, it said.

The plant will have a minimum lifetime of 25 years.

More than 1,000 people will be employed during the construction phase, PKA said, and around 350 will work on the plant once the turbines are in operation.

Both the turbines and the foundations of the Butendiek park will be produced in Denmark, it said.

German wind park firm wpd will develop the park itself, and investment will be arranged by Siemens Financial Services and the European infrastructure fund Marguerite, both of which have experience with offshore wind power in England and Belgium, PKA said.

Wpd will be a co-owner of the wind park.

Two-thirds of the project financing will be covered by the Danish export credit agency (Eksportkreditfonden), the European Investment Bank, KfW, Unicredit and others, PKA said.

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