Bakkafrost is looking to make the power source of the Faroe Islands’ largest energy consumer fully renewable—turning green a vital link in its own value chain while in the process reducing the island nation’s total carbon footprint.
With a unique supply chain integration that is known as the world’s most comprehensive in the aquaculture business, salmon major Bakkafrost, headquartered at Glyvrar, Faroe Islands, has long worked systematically to put in place well-defined sustainability practices across all of its business segments.
The efforts have been stepped up with a huge milestone envisioned more recently in a bid to tackle an old challenge: industrial processing at the Havsbrún fishmeal, marine oil and salmon feed factory. Bakkafrost acquired the Fuglafjørður-based facility two decades ago to strengthen its supply chain and guarantee a stable flow of feed for its growing fish farming business.
Founded back in the mid 1960s, Havsbrún has long been counted as a heavyweight in the fishmeal and marine oil business and today ranks as one of the world’s largest feed manufacturers. This makes it a vital asset in Bakkafrost’s value chain—a fact which the relatively recent expansion of Bakkafrost’s salmon farming operations into Scotland puts into sharp perspective.
Thus in 2023, in liaison with Faroese energy enterprise Effo, Bakkafrost unveiled Eysturlund, an ambitious wind farm development plan designed to turn Havsbrún’s oil-powered boilers into electric-powered ones, all of which includes securing the enormous energy supply needed to make the switch possible. Considering the scale of Havsbrún’s processing operations—roughly half a million tonnes of raw fish in annual throughput—the electrification of the boilers would mathematically not be possible with the current power capacity of the Faroe Islands’ grid.
A 100-megawatt energy park consisting of 24 turbines, the Effo-Bakkafrost project will upend that equation. Generating 350 gigawatt hours of renewable energy on an annual basis once operational, Eysturlund will by far exceed the output of any other wind farm in the Faroes. Beyond reducing Bakkafrost’s overall carbon footprint, Eysturlund will introduce opportunities for alternative energy sources such as ammoniac for ships looking to switch from oil combustion engines. The added energy resources made available could likewise, for example, make district heating for residential homes and commercial buildings a viable option.
“It’s an advanced project aimed at significantly boosting renewable energy production,” Bakkafrost CEO Regin Jacobsen noted. “The project involves establishing the largest wind farm in the Faroe Islands and will be capable of generating power equivalent to 10 percent of the collective oil consumption across the islands—both on land and at sea. The wind farm will significantly reduce Bakkafrost’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
Awaiting approvals
The Eysturlund project has generally been met with approval in the public domain, even with top management of the grid company—Sev, a corporation jointly owned by all of the municipalities of the Faroes—voicing wholehearted support.
However, according to the government agency overseeing domestic energy affairs, Umhvørvisstovan, the project in its present form does not fully comply with the current regulatory regime—a finding that’s being contested by others, including Effo. The core issue in that respect appears to concern energy transmission from the wind farm to the Havsbrún facility over some distance, that is, whether the grid can legally be utilized in such a case. While essentially this looks like a pragmatic arrangement that should make good economic sense for all parties involved, with no disruptive influence on protected grid business, the counter argument appears to maintain that any electrical power passing through Sev’s network by definition belongs to the grid and thus cannot be reserved for third-party use unless explicitly provided for in the legislation.
For all that, ultimately, an amendment to the Power Supply Bill is plausible to be tabled in the Faroese Parliament at some point to secure the legal foundation of the Eysturlund project. The absence of any open opposition to the project as well as the publicly stated positions of several influential figures— including, for instance, the mayors of Runavík and Fuglafjørður alongside the director general of the power grid company—indicate that the adjustment could likely be made in a matter of months.
“With the introduction of the new wind farm, we will take a significant and vital step towards achieving our SBTi target of reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50 percent within six to seven years,” Mr. Jacobsen added.
“The project’s primary goal is to generate electricity; but when there is more supply than demand, such as at night, the wind farm will also have the capacity to create hydrogen, oxygen, and heat. This allows the option of using the generated energy for other resources, such as Bakkafrost’s bigger ships in the Faroe Islands, which can be adapted to use 100 percent renewable energy.”
