Swedish renewable energy developer OX2 has applied to build a 5.5GW wind farm, the world’s largest single such development, between the islands of Gotland and Öland in the Baltic Sea.

If it goes ahead as planned, the Aurora project will have 370 turbines up to 370m tall, about 60m higher than the Shard tower in London. These will produce enough electricity to power 5 million homes, 17% of Sweden’s national demand, and would cut its carbon production by 14 million tonnes a year.

Altogether, the Stockholm-based company has 11.7GW of renewable electricity projects in development in Sweden.

Electricity production

Hillevi Priscar, OX2’s manager for the country, commented: “Together with our other planned offshore wind farms Aurora constitutes a significant part of the electricity production Sweden needs to reach the climate targets and to secure energy independence.”

OX2 has previously indicated that it expects Aurora to be complete in 2030 at a cost of around $18bn. It has not said which turbine it would deploy – the largest production model at present is made by MingYang Smart Energy, a Chinese engineer that offers a 242m-high unit with 118m blades.

Ørsted’s Hornsea project in the North Sea has 7.5GW of total capacity, but is made up of four separate wind farms.