Image: Boskalis

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GoodFuels Marine will be supplying a biofuel blend to ships operated by Royal Boskalis Westminster NV (Boskalis) for an offshore wind farm project in Borssele, Netherlands, the two companies have confirmed.

The Borssele Alpha project, run by transmission system operator TenneT, is aimed at connecting the Borssele offshore grid with the Dutch high-voltage grid.

Since last week, the large trailing suction hopper dredger Prins der Nederlanden has been running on a biofuel blend that GoodFuels supplied to the vessel.

The delivery was the result of a long-term partnership agreement Boskalis recently signed with GoodFuels as part of its 'Boskalis on Bio' initiative, where it plans to reduce the CO2 emissions of its fleet and equipment by 35 percent in the next five years - with advanced biofuels supplied by GoodFuels playing a key part in the project.

Various sea trials conducted by Boskalis are said to have demonstrated that sustainable biofuels lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 90 percent compared to fossil fuels.

On the Marker Wadden nature restoration project, Boskalis performed dredging work for six months using a B50 biofuel blend consisting of 50 percent residual products from the paper industry. Boskalis now uses this fuel to power not just its vessels but also its dry earthmoving equipment and trucks in the Netherlands.

Isabel Welten, Head of GoodFuels Marine, said: "We see offshore wind as a major growth market for our sustainable marine biofuels. We are happy to see that for the construction of offshore wind parks, the total footprint is taken into consideration, including the emissions from the fuel for the vessels. We are grateful to Boskalis for taking the industry lead in this and hope to see that more and more project owners will take this as a requirement for future projects."

Marco Kuijpers, senior manager Offshore Nederland at TenneT, praised the move made by Boskalis to reduce emissions, saying: "In addition to the safe, efficient and reliable transportation of electricity TenneT's objectives include doing this in a sustainable way. To achieve this, we take various measures to mitigate or offset the impact of our activities on the environment and we are working towards making our operations climate-neutral by 2025. And so we warmly applaud Boskalis' initiative to use a biofuel blend to power its vessels. This results in an even more environmentally conscious approach to a sustainable project like the Borssele offshore grid."