Munich Airport Locks In 40 GWh a Year from North Sea Wind as RWE’s 660 MW Nordseecluster A Nears Turbine Phase

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RWE and Flughafen München GmbH (Munich Airport) have signed a ten-year power purchase agreement under which the airport will receive 40 gigawatt hours of offshore wind electricity annually from RWE’s Nordseecluster A wind farm, currently under construction in the German North Sea, the energy company confirmed on 10 March 2026.

The PPA, signed in February 2026, guarantees the airport 40 GWh of electricity per year from the new wind farm. That volume is sufficient to supply approximately 12,000 households annually with green electricity. The agreement covers the green electricity required for the airport’s infrastructure, including buildings and aprons, and forms a core component of Munich Airport’s NetZero 2035 sustainability strategy.

The deal is expected to cut the airport’s carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 13,000 tonnes per year.

RWE emerged as the winner of a tender that Munich Airport opened early last year, looking to award an offshore wind PPA. The tender process concluded in December 2025, according to a contract award notice published on a European tender website on 15 January.

The agreement marks a notable step for RWE in building a corporate customer base for its large offshore assets ahead of commissioning. Corporate PPAs have become an increasingly important mechanism for financing large renewable projects in Europe, helping developers secure predictable revenue streams while reducing reliance on wholesale electricity markets.

Ulf Kerstin, Chief Commercial Officer at RWE Supply and Trading, said electricity supply contracts of this kind are an important step in accelerating decarbonisation in Germany while ensuring long term supply security. He added that large-scale offshore projects such as the Nordseecluster allow RWE to feed more carbon-free electricity into the grid and support the development of a stable and sustainable energy system.

Dr Jan-Henrik Andersson, CCO and CSO at Munich Airport, said the additional green electricity makes a significant contribution to the airport’s own energy supply while helping it achieve its in-company climate targets by saving approximately 13,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Nordseecluster A is the first phase of the wider Nordseecluster development, which has a combined capacity of up to 1.6 GW. The project is jointly owned by RWE (51%) and Norges Bank Investment Management (49%).

Nordseecluster A will be equipped with 44 Vestas V236-15.0 MW wind turbines. Offshore construction began in 2025, with foundation installation completed by the end of that year and cable-laying currently in progress.

Each of the 44 monopile foundations measures approximately 85 metres in length and weighs an average of 1,500 tonnes. Before installation, the foundations were held in interim storage in Eemshaven, the Netherlands, before being shipped on Van Oord‘s installation vessels Boreas and Aeolus to the construction site.

Turbine installation is scheduled to begin in summer 2026, with the wind farm planned to reach commercial operation in early 2027. The second phase, Nordseecluster B, will add 900 MW through 60 additional turbines, with commercial operation expected in 2029. Once fully operational, the entire Nordseecluster development is forecast to generate 6.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to meet the needs of approximately 1.6 million average households.

The timing of the PPA aligns with a period of growth at Munich Airport. The airport is preparing to open its new Terminal 1 Pier on 13 April 2026, a development that will increase the facility’s electricity demand and makes long-term supply certainty a commercial priority.

Munich Airport’s move follows a broader trend among major European transport hubs. Frankfurt Airport operator Fraport AG signed a comparable long-term corporate PPA several years earlier, and Amsterdam’s Schiphol has similarly pursued renewable electricity agreements as airport operators face mounting pressure from regulators and investors to reduce Scope 2 emissions ahead of the European Union’s tightening climate benchmarks.

For RWE, the Munich deal signals a growing appetite among industrial and infrastructure customers for long-term, fixed-volume offshore wind contracts, providing revenue visibility for projects that carry multi-billion-euro construction costs before a single kilowatt-hour reaches the grid.