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Orsted, PGE Make FID on 1.5-GW Wind Farm Near Poland

Danish wind developer Ørsted A/S and PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A. (PGE) have made a final investment decision (FID) on the Baltica 2 Offshore Wind Farm, planned to have a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts (GW). The project will be built, owned and operated in a 50/50 partnership between the two firms. Baltica 2, which will […]

Danish wind developer Ørsted A/S and PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A. (PGE) have made a final investment decision (FID) on the Baltica 2 Offshore Wind Farm, planned to have a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts (GW).

The project will be built, owned and operated in a 50/50 partnership between the two firms.

Baltica 2, which will be located approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) off the Polish coast near Ustka, is expected to be fully commissioned in 2027, Orsted said in a news release.

Baltica 2 has a 25-year inflation-protected contract for difference (CfD) in place with the Polish state. The wind farm has obtained all permits and has signed a grid connection contract with the Polish transmission system operator PSE, according to the release. The wind farm will use the Port of Gdansk for the storage, pre-assembly, and offshore installation of wind turbine components.

All major component and vessel contracts for Baltica 2 have been signed, locking in the majority of the project’s capital expenditures, “which significantly de-risks the project,” Orsted noted.

According to a separate report from PGE, the total budget for the project, including capital expenditures in development and construction, is estimated at approximately $7.41 billion (PLN 30 billion).

Newly appointed Orsted CEO Rasmus Errboe said, “With today’s announcement, we’re ready to build Baltica 2, a flagship project for offshore wind in Poland. We’re satisfied with the value creation of the project, which has an attractive risk-reward profile. I wish to thank the Polish government for its support, and I want to thank our partner PGE for working with us to reach this moment. Together, we’re writing a new chapter in the Polish energy sector, and we’re setting up an industry that will bring jobs and industrial development to Poland for decades to come”.

PGE CEO Dariusz Marzec said, “The Baltica 2 offshore wind farm, the largest renewable energy project currently under development in the Baltic Sea, will diversify Poland’s energy production, enhance energy security, and provide cleaner and more affordable energy. This investment represents a significant step in Poland’s energy transition and serves as a major boost to economic development, attracting new investments to the entire Polish economy and helping to create new jobs”.

Agata Staniewska-Bolesta, Orsted Managing Director of Offshore Poland, said, “The development of offshore wind energy is a key element for Poland’s energy transition, which will strengthen the country’s energy security. We’re very proud that despite the macroeconomic challenges, we and our partner PGE have reached this important milestone by joining the competences of Poland’s largest electricity producer with Ørsted’s 30 years of experience as the global leader in offshore wind development. As Poland’s largest-ever renewable energy project, Baltica 2 will lead the way for Poland’s transition to green energy, producing green electricity to meet the needs of approximately 2.5 million Polish households and deliver first power in 2027”.

According to the release, Poland’s energy policy focuses on offshore wind as a key technology to make Poland a low-emission economy. With its Offshore Wind Act, the country is targeting to install 5.9 GW of offshore wind by 2030, and 11 GW by 2040.

New Orsted CEO Appointed

In a separate news release, Orsted’s board appointed Rasmus Errboe, former Deputy CEO and Chief Commercial Officer, as the new Group President and CEO of the company, replacing Mads Nipper.

Orsted Chair Lene Skole said, “The renewable energy market has fundamentally changed since January 2021. The impacts on our business of the increasingly challenging situation in the offshore wind industry, ranging from supply chain bottlenecks, interest rate increases, to a changing regulatory landscape, mean that our focus has shifted. Therefore, the board has today agreed with Mads Nipper that it’s the right time for him to step down and the board has appointed Rasmus Errboe to take over as CEO”.

Errboe joined Orsted in 2012 and became a member of executive management in 2022. He has previously been the Interim Group CFO, Regional Head of Europe, Regional Head of Continental Europe, CFO for the Offshore business unit globally, and Head of Orsted’s Group M&A department. Errboe was overall responsible for the IPO of Ørsted in 2016 and the divestment of Orsted’s oil and gas business in 2017.

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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