Page 33: of Marine News Magazine (April 2023)

32 34

ployment of 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050,” said Phil Lewis, director of research at Intelatus Global Partners. “Yet despite the demand drivers and local content preferences supported by the Jones Act, there has been relatively limited newbuilding activity for crew transfer vessels (CTV) and service op- erations vessels (SOV) in the U.S.”

Several U.S. shipbuilders are al- ready active building CTVs, including

Blount Boats and Senseco Marine in

Rhode Island, Gladding-Hearn Ship- building in Massachusetts, St. Johns

Ship Building in Florida and Gulf

Craft in Louisiana, but Lewis noted that each has certain capacity limita- tions and that the demand for these vessels will be strong—potentially hundreds over the coming decade.

Lewis and Intelatus have identi? ed at least 30 other U.S. shipyards capable of building CTVs to meet this demand.

In the SOV segment, Edison

Chouest Offshore is building two ves- sels across its Gulf Coast shipyards, and Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding is building another in Sturgeon Bay,

Wis. for Crowley’s CREST Wind joint venture with ESVAGT. Lewis said he anticipates further SOV activ- ity for a broad spectrum of U.S. yards and suppliers in the coming years.

To date, just one yard, Keppel Am-

FELS in Brownsville, Texas, is building a Jones Act-compliant wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV), Charyb- dis for Dominion Energy. It is cur- rently expected that most foundation and turbine installation work will be performed by foreign ? agged ships supported by Jones Act tug and barge feeder spreads, presenting yet another www.marinelink.com MN 33|