Top Dutch pension fund ABP to fund massive offshore wind energy site on North Sea

ABP, the largest pension fund in the Netherlands, wants to realize the largest wind farm in the North Sea. The plan is to generate 4 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power over 5.5 million households. ABP is in talks with a prominent wind farm builder for a partnership in the project, named Noordzeker, NOS reports.

The pension fund for civil servants and teachers is selling off all its interests in oil, coal, and gas producers worth 15 billion euros. It aims to be rid of most of its fossil fuel assets by March 2023. The pension fund plans to push that money into renewable energy. According to ABP, it already has 18.5 billion euros invested in sustainable energy.

ABP changed course last year after its members protested at ABP offices in Amsterdam and Heerlen. The civil servants and teachers demanded that their pensions no longer be invested in fossil fuels.

The pension fund now plans to play an influential role in the renewable energy plans in the North Sea in the coming years. ABP wants to get in on the ground floor of this project, unlike pension funds’ usual strategy to invest in projects that are already operational or under construction.

“It is beneficial for the financial return to be at the beginning, and we want to have a say in how the park is built. We also want to build up knowledge and expertise and show that we are a major player in the Dutch energy transition,” ABP board chairman Harmen van Wijnen said to NOS. That also means that ABP can ensure more attention is paid to energy projects’ effect on nature and the local wildlife.

“We hope that the government is sensitive to the social value of our participation,” Van Wijnen said. “We have to invest our money for our participants for 30 or 40 years and want to do that in sustainable energy projects that are visible to them.”