Galileo and Hope Group form a joint venture to develop the Lupiae Maris 525MW floating offshore wind farm in Italy

The Project foresees the installation of 35 innovative floating wind turbines in the Southern Adriatic Sea between Brindisi and Lecce, each with an expected capacity of 15MW. Thanks to the availability of floating offshore wind foundations, which allow access to a deeper seabed than the conventional fixed-bottom offshore turbines, the plant will be located several kilometers from the coast, at a greater distance than that of conventional offshore projects.

Additionally, the Project’s particular position will also allow the exploitation of a stronger wind resource – one of the highest in the Adriatic Sea – thus enabling the production of electricity at a very competitive cost within the Italian offshore wind sector.

Lupiae Maris’s envisaged electricity generation should find plenty of room in the Italian energy mix. Designed to generate electricity for about 1.5 billion kWh, i.e. the annual needs of over 500,000 households, the plant is expected to replace imports of about 150 million cubic meters of natural gas each year.

The Project concept was developed entirely in Apulia, and development activities launched in late 2020. Following the completion of environmental impact studies, including those on the seabed, birdlife, mammals, and landscape, in the coming months the Project will be ready to submit the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) application. Subsequently, in the first half of 2023, the Company will launch a campaign to make a precise assessment of the wind resource at sea.