BP has put bp Wind Energy, its onshore wind business in the US, estimated to be worth $2bn, up for sale as it trims its renewables business and sells off underperforming assets.
BP also wrote down the value of its offshore US wind business by $1.1bn last year after struggling to make progress on three projects on the east coast.
“Ultimately, offshore wind in the US is fundamentally broken,” said the company’s former renewables chief Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath last November. She left BP in April.
The wind farms, spread across seven states, are all operational and have a combined capacity of 1.7GW, of which BP owns 1.3GW.
BP has a pipeline of another 12.7GW of onshore wind globally, but did not comment on what would happen to any of the prospective projects in the US. One person close to the company said the sale was for BP’s “entire onshore wind business”.
Wind installations on land have slowed, falling 26% in 2023 compared with the previous year and wind turbine manufacturers including Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, and GE Vernova have continued to report losses in their wind segments.
Wind made up 10% of US power generation last year compared with 4% from solar.