Colombia's Duque says Barranquilla ready to become offshore wind hub

The Colombian city of Barranquilla is set to become a logistics hub for offshore wind developers as the country eyes multibillion-dollar investments in the nascent sector, President Iván Duque said on Tuesday. 

The first project of its type will be a 350MW complex being co-developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Barranquilla. The initiative is expected to require investments of up to US$1bn, according to officials.

"Barranquilla ... is going to build this first offshore wind farm, but it also becomes a service hub," Duque said at an event promoting the implementation of Colombia's offshore wind roadmap.  

"Thinking about the dynamism of this industry ... no matter how bad things go for us, we already have 1GW assured," he said, without providing details of other projects. 

The 217-page roadmap, authored by London-based firm Renewables Consulting Group (RCG) in partnership with the World Bank and the British government, says Colombia has the potential for 50GW of offshore wind capacity in the western Atlantic basin.

The document forecasts up to 1GW of installed marine wind capacity by 2030, 3GW by 2040 and 9GW by 2050.

“Today the construction of the future begins," Duque said, adding that Colombia is on track to end the year with 2.8GW of installed capacity from renewables and 4.5GW from distributed generation initiatives.