Page 20: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2021)

OFFSHORE WIND FLOATING WIND ver the past 12 months, the ? oating offshore wind sec- ture, renewables, at Aker Solutions, told the conference that tor appears to have had a major dose of adrenaline. there will need to be thought put into ports, potentially pick-

While the largest development, to date, is the relative- ing ports to invest in that can be hubs. The level of activity

O ly small-scale 50MW Kincardine project off northeast expected means there will need to be collaboration around use

Scotland (which will be outdone by the 88MW Tampen proj- of ports, Tom Glover, UK country chair at RWE, a German ect in Norway later next year [2022]), an ever growing num- energy company, told the same event.

ber of major energy companies, from Iberdrola to TotalEner- Quite what infrastructure ports will need isn’t that clear. gies, have been setting forth plans for gigawatt-scale ? oating Nancy McLean, Senior Offshore Development Manager, EDF wind farms – all over the globe. Renewables, says, “I think port infrastructure that’s available

This year, the Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC) fore- in the local supply chain context is going to have quite a large cast for ? oating wind build out over the next 10 years shot up effect on what technology is delivered geographically.” Oth- by 10GW, from the 6.5 GW estimate made last year, to 16.5 er, like Colin McKinnon, Technical Director, Wood, agree.

GW – and that’s a conservative number, says Feng Zhao, head “There will be a certain amount of tailoring (of foundation of strategy and market analyst at GWEC, with more like 20 designs) to the speci? c location you’re installing in.” But,

GW potentially out there. “There are many ways to skin a cat and it will vary in mar-

Leading the charge are the likes of Japan and South Ko- kets and local content,” adds Stephen Bull, EVP Renewables rea, that have set various multi-gigawatt targets, with Nor- at Aker Solutions, also speaking at the Aberdeen event, or- way, France and the UK, which have launched ? oating off- ganized by industry groups RenewableUK and Scottish Re- shore wind auctions and licensing rounds, also in the top newables. Indeed, there are still a large number of foundation ? ve, says GWEC. concepts out there – up to 40, according to GWEC. But they

But while the short-term, up to 2025, is still expected to be mostly all ? t into four types; spar, semisubmersible, barge and dominated by pre-commercial projects, mostly in the tens to tension leg platform. For concrete spars, there’s a need for hundreds of megawatts, that’s not stopping many starting to deepwater quaysides and space for concrete slipforming, for plan out the infrastructure that will be is expected to be needed example, while other solutions need more laydown area. for the gigawatt-scale projects expected to be being built in “One of the major challenges to overcome is building these the latter half of the 2020s. Egil Birkmore, VP HV infrastruc- structures at scale, having suitable facilities to construct ? oat-

Photos courtesy Aker Solutions / Lars Melkevik.

20 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • December 2021

MR #12 (18-33).indd 20 12/2/2021 10:49:47 AM