Blackstone Group LP has partnered with German wind energy developer Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH to build a wind farm

Blackstone Group LP has partnered with German wind energy developer Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH to build a wind farm.

Blackstone agreed to participate in the development and construction of Meerwind, a wind farm project to be built 80 kilometres off the northern coast of Germany at an estimated cost of more than €1 billion or $1.6 billion.

Meerwind will comprise 80 wind turbines with a combined generation capacity of 400MW. When completed, the wind farm is scheduled to generate about 1.6 billion KWh annually. This would be sufficient to supply 500,000 households with electricity.

"The project supports the German government's stated objective of fighting global warming by reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020," Blackstone said in a statement.

As per the information available, this will be Blackstone's second significant investment in renewable energy following the financial closing of the $870 million Bujagali hydroelectric power station project by Blackstone's 80 percent-owned portfolio company, Sithe Global, in December 2007.

David Foley, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, said: "We continue to seek out opportunities to invest in large scale energy infrastructure assets, applying Blackstone's capital, relationships and industry expertise to generate favourable returns for our limited partners while benefiting the environment and stimulating the local economy."

Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH was founded in 1990 by Joachim Falkenhagen as one of the first dedicated developers for wind energy projects in Germany.

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