Petrobras' assessment aims at producing renewable energy in an offshore wind farm, one of the state-owned giant's green alternatives

Petrobras (PETR3;PETR4) announced that it is analyzing, together with the Norwegian energy company Equinor, the environmental viability of an offshore wind farm in Aracatu, in the Campos Basin, 20 kilometers from the coast. The project under evaluation is an offshore wind farm with an energy production capacity of 4 gigawatts (GW).
The report transmitted by the company makes official the statements given by the president of Petrobras, José Mauro Ferreira Coelho, last Wednesday (the 18th), in the morning, during a panel at the congress 'Global Carbon Market – Decarbonisation & Green Investments', which runs until this Friday at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, in the south zone of the city.
At the event, Coelho stated that Brazil has great potential for energy offshore wind and that this generation mode is in line with Petrobras' experience, leadership and competence in the maritime environment, especially in deep and ultra-deep waters. According to him, offshore wind farms are one of the company's environmentally friendly alternatives, along with the development and production of advanced biofuels.

Petrobras points out that the partnership with Equinor was established in 2018

According to Petrobras, the joint assessment is the result of a partnership signed with Equinor in 2018 and is associated with the Strategic Plan of state for the years 2022 to 2026. The company also announced that the environmental characterization form for the Aracatu Project, a document required in the environmental licensing process, was filed in August 2020.
The study related to the wind farm in the Campos Basin has the support of the Research and Development (R&D) program of the company's Research and Innovation Center (Cenpes), and is dedicated to reducing risks and accelerating gains in technological maturity.
The director of Institutional Relations and Sustainability at Petrobras, Rafael Chaves, declared, in a note, that the Brazilian potential for offshore wind energy production allows the country to discover promising opportunities for diversifying its energy matrix.
Like wind generation on land, the technology associated with offshore wind farms uses the power of the wind to produce renewable energy, but it works on the basis of large equipment and delivers large volumes of energy.

About offshore wind energy

Offshore wind energy is a clean and renewable source of energy obtained by harnessing the force of the wind that blows on the high seas, where it reaches a higher and more constant speed, due to the absence of barriers. In order to exploit this resource as much as possible, megastructures established on the seabed and equipped with the latest technical innovations are developed.

Under this bias, the wind turbines Offshore turbines are built and located in bodies of water, such as oceans and river estuaries. Although the term is generally used to refer to offshore wind farms, offshore wind farms can also be located close to shore.

Offshore wind farms have the advantage of being able to occupy very large areas, given that they are located out to sea. Thus, these parks usually have several hundred megawatts of installed capacity and, considering that wind energy is a form of clean energy, the impact on the environment caused by these structures can be minimal.

In addition, there is also the advantage that offshore wind farms can be built very close to where energy is consumed, given that most large cities are close to the sea.