Lego and Dong inaugurate giant offshore wind farm

The Borkum Riffgrund project is expected to produce enough clean electricity to supply 320,000 German households each year.

Wind-developer Dong Energy owns 50% of the project, while Lego bought a 32% stake in February for $534m. Investment firm William Demant owns the remainder.

The renewable electricity will be fed into the German grid, but Lego says it will count towards its target of generating enough renewable power to meet all its energy needs by 2020.

Lego Group president Jørgen Vig Knudstorp said: “Today, I am proud and literally energised to celebrate that the wind farm now generates renewable energy. It is a substantial step towards our 2020 goal, to be 100% balanced by renewable energy.

“We will reach this by focusing on our energy efficiency, which has improved by more than 20% in the last five years and by investing in renewable energy. These combined efforts mean that by 2020 we will produce more renewable energy than we use to manufacture the billions of LEGO bricks children all over the world love to play with.”­­­­

PR battle

Last year, Lego came under sustained criticism from environmental campaign group Greenpeace over its partnership with oil giant Shell. The toymaker ultimately ended the partnership dating from the 1960s which saw Shell-branded Lego sets sold by the company.

Greenpeace protested against Shells plans for Arctic drilling and targeted Lego’s partnership with a scathing YouTube video, entitled “Everything is NOT awesome”, which attracted more than seven million views.

Since then, Lego has upped its commitment to renewable energy and ploughed £100m into more environmentally-friendly materials to be used in its products and packaging.

Brad Allen