WE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN OFFSHORE WIND POWER.
Dr. Gernot Blanke
On Monday, September 20, 2010, wpd released a tarse statement, no longer via the long since technologically obsolète telex,
but via email. The first sentence confirmed ail the rumours which
had been doing the rounds in the wind sectorfor weeks: "The wpd
Group has acguired 100 % of the shares in Butendiek Offshore
Windpark Holding GmbH, Hamburg, from SSE Renewables Germany Holdings GmbH."
The announcement caused no great astonishment either in the
wind industry or in the banking world. wpd has long become a
significant player in the German wind sector - both on land and
on water. And it has done so in a relatively short time. In 1996, the
two lawyers from Bremen with doctoral degrees, Gernot Blanke
and Klaus Meier, had set up wind project development GmbH, a
clumsy name from which the abbreviation known today, wpd, was
derived in the following years
To start with, wpd is more focussed on the financing than the
independent development of wind farms. The design of wind
funds is coordinated by Blanke, Meier and a small team where
the money for constructing wind farms is collected from private
investors. wpd first makes its mark in the Eifel région of Germany.
Thanks to its commitment, the finance is found to build two small
wind turbines with an output of 60Q kilowatts each making up the
wind farm Olzheimer Berg.
Only a few years later, wpd offshore GmbH is founded. "We always
believed in offshore wind power", says wpd founder Blanke as he
explains the reasons. "We saw our own offshore wind department
from the outset as risk diversification as then and now we relied
on having a broad portfolio."
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Dr. Gernot Blanke
On Monday, September 20, 2010, wpd released a tarse statement, no longer via the long since technologically obsolète telex,
but via email. The first sentence confirmed ail the rumours which
had been doing the rounds in the wind sectorfor weeks: "The wpd
Group has acguired 100 % of the shares in Butendiek Offshore
Windpark Holding GmbH, Hamburg, from SSE Renewables Germany Holdings GmbH."
The announcement caused no great astonishment either in the
wind industry or in the banking world. wpd has long become a
significant player in the German wind sector - both on land and
on water. And it has done so in a relatively short time. In 1996, the
two lawyers from Bremen with doctoral degrees, Gernot Blanke
and Klaus Meier, had set up wind project development GmbH, a
clumsy name from which the abbreviation known today, wpd, was
derived in the following years
To start with, wpd is more focussed on the financing than the
independent development of wind farms. The design of wind
funds is coordinated by Blanke, Meier and a small team where
the money for constructing wind farms is collected from private
investors. wpd first makes its mark in the Eifel région of Germany.
Thanks to its commitment, the finance is found to build two small
wind turbines with an output of 60Q kilowatts each making up the
wind farm Olzheimer Berg.
Only a few years later, wpd offshore GmbH is founded. "We always
believed in offshore wind power", says wpd founder Blanke as he
explains the reasons. "We saw our own offshore wind department
from the outset as risk diversification as then and now we relied
on having a broad portfolio."
120