EnergyOMNI's Perspectives I Colombia to Launch First Offshore Wind Auction in 2025; Two Chinese Developers Prequalified

Edited by EnergyOMNI

Colombia will hold its first-ever offshore wind auction this year, marking the first offshore wind tender in Latin America. In 2022, Colombia published its Offshore Wind Energy Roadmap, which estimated the country's offshore wind potential at 50 GW—27 GW suitable for fixed-bottom and around 21 GW for floating wind. The government has also set a target of installing 7 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040.

The upcoming auction will adopt a Contract for Difference (CfD) scheme with a 15-year contract term, allocating between 1 GW and 3 GW of capacity. The first stage, prequalification, had completed in October 2024. Earlier in March in 2025, the government announced that eight developer consortia had successfully prequalified, submitting bids for a total of 69 sites, located across the northern coastal departments of Atlántico, Bolívar, Magdalena, and Sucre.

Recently, the government extended the bid submission deadline by two months to October 14, with the auction results expected on December 23. Notably, in addition to developers from Europe and Colombia, the prequalified bidders include two Chinese companies—Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina) and China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG).

In October 2024, Colombia's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Rojas Rodríguez, stated that the country was in talks to join China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to attract more Chinese investment in renewable energy. During the China–CELAC Forum held in May 2025, Colombia officially announced its accession to the BRI.

According to consultancy Wood Mackenzie, since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Chinese companies have completed 369 overseas power projects totaling 156 GW of capacity. Renewables account for 36% of total installed capacity. However, due to the smaller average size of renewable projects compared to thermal power plants, renewables represent the majority by project count—261 projects, or about 70% of the total.

In particular, over the past two years, more than half of newly commissioned projects were renewables. In 2024 alone, new power installations reached a record 24 GW, of which 52% came from renewable technologies. Following China's 2021 pledge to stop financing new overseas coal-fired power plants, clean energy has been prioritized. With emerging economies seeking to diversify their energy mix, China has increasingly leveraged the BRI to export EPC services and renewable equipment, thereby expanding its green influence. Whether Chinese power developers and EPCs will secure contracts in Colombia's offshore wind auction remains a key development to watch.