BP’s senior vice president for offshore wind, Matthias Bausenwein, will depart the oil and gas company following a carve-out of its offshore wind operations.
A spokesperson for the company said Bausenwein has “elected to leave BP to pursue other career opportunities”.
He had been with BP since 2022 and led it to build a portfolio with approximately 10 GW of capacity.
The spokesperson confirmed that Richard Sanford, who joined BP in 2022 from RWE Renewables, will take up the role of interim senior vice president for offshore wind.
BP said on Monday that it intends to combine and spin out its offshore wind portfolio of development-stage projects and leases with projects owned and operated by Japan’s largest power producer Jera.
A spokesperson denied that BP plans to exit its offshore wind business through a stock market listing, emphasising instead that the carve-out solidifies BP’s continuing “capital light” commitment to renewables.
He said that the joint venture, JERA Nex bp, will provide the company with access to a portfolio of operating offshore wind farms.
Chief executive Murray Auchincloss, who replaced outgoing CEO Bernard Looney in January after he had failed to disclose certain personal relationships with female staff to the board, has been accused of scaling back BP’s low-carbon pledges.
Reducing BP’s capital expenditure on renewables has been a hallmark of Auchincloss’s strategy at BP since taking the helm in January.
The most senior leader to leave BP’s renewables business was Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, a former CEO of RWE Renewables, who left BP in April, after just over two years in the job.
BP said in a statement on Monday that the joint venture will “significantly reduce BP’s anticipated investment into renewables through the rest of this decade”.
It is expected to contribute $3.25 billion in capital to the joint venture, out of a combined commitment of $5.8bn, representing less than one-third of the $10bn that BP had been expected to invest in renewables through to 2030.
In 2020, BP had planned to boost its annual low-carbon investment ten-fold to $5bn a year by 2030.
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