Page 20: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2022)

U.S. OFFSHORE WIND for development. In the long-term we anticipate a further 60 indicate a further 75 GW of capacity will be added by 2025.

GW of potential to be developed taking the capital investment Elsewhere in Asia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan aim • required by 2050 beyond $300 billion. to deploy over 33 GW of capacity by 2030.

• Outside of Europe and Asia, we anticipate new market

Con? dence Grows entrants in Australia and South America.

2022 has already shown market con? dence in the U.S. wind Whereas global supply and demand of offshore construction segment, and we anticipate the trend to continue witnessed by vessels is currently in balance or in some cases over-supplied, three factors: we anticipate tight to under supply of wind turbine and foun-

FIDs made for close to 1 GW of offshore wind potential dation vessels, heavy lift vessels and cable layers from around – After many false starts for commercial wind farms, the ? rst the middle of the decade. Without new vessels, we anticipate two commercial scale offshore wind projects have been per- some impact to project costs and/or schedules. mitted, reached ? nancial close and have broken ground. We Details of our analysis of U.S. wind farm construction sched- do not anticipate further FIDs in 2022 due to the project per- ules can be found in our monthly U.S. offshore wind report.

mitting process, but the foundations are in place for multiple

FIDs next year and after. Jones Act Vessels: Investment Needed

Lease price in? ation – Developers committed to pay a record In the March 2021 White House statement on offshore $4.4 billion for six leases in February’s New York Bight auc- wind, one ambition was to achieve “the construction of 4 to 6 tion. The price effectively signi? es an option payment to secure specialized turbine installation vessels in U.S. shipyards, each the rights to assess and then develop a wind farm on the lease. representing an investment between $250 and $500 million.”

The prices paid per MW of potential capacity were roughly six Achievement of this goal is currently behind plan.

times more than the average paid for three Atlantic leases in Till now only one Jones Act wind turbine installation ves- 2019, the last federal offshore wind lease sale. One developer’s sel is under construction. Without additional domestic supply, bid was nine time more than it paid for a lease in 2019. developers will need to secure installation vessels from the in-

Developers are committing to signi? cant supply chain in- ternational market –- as one developer has already done for its frastructure investment and are making good on these com- project. However, although international supply of wind turbine mitments – In its March 2021 statement, the White House tar- installation vessels is growing, the growth the of suitable large geted “one to two new U.S. factories for each major windfarm vessels remains relatively slow and supply will be stretched in component including wind turbine nacelles, blades, towers, the global market around the middle of the decade – at the same foundations, and subsea cables”. time U.S. offshore wind installation activity is expected to peak.

At the time this seemed somewhat optimistic, yet through The only other Jones Act compliant construction vessel state procurement requirements and support multiple key committed to date is a wind farm scour protection/rock in- component factories are now being built and will provide on- stallation vessel. One would expect there to be a signi? cant going opportunities to the domestic supply chain. Investment amount of construction of service operations vessels (SOVs) plans in construction and O&M ports is also translating to and crew transfer vessels (CTVs). Both are used in the long- ground being broken and projects advancing. term operations and maintenance phase of a wind farm and will need to be Jones Act compliant. Till now one SOV has been

Activity to Peak from 2023 to 2026 announced as under construction – although the indications are

Achieving the goals of 27 GW by 2030 and 110 GW by that others are in the pipeline. In the CTV segment, three ves- 2050 will make the U.S. a signi? cant global offshore wind sels are already operating, and ? ve CTV construction contracts market. However, developers of projects in the U.S. will need have been announced recently. Despite the building activity, the to account for a signi? cant upswing in global offshore wind domestic supply and SOVs and CTVs is signi? cantly below our capacity and supply chain competition in the same period. forecast for demand.

U.S. project activity will see an initial peak from 2023 to 2026. This will coincide with a spike in bottom-? xed project Floating wind activity in Europe and East Asia – and an increase competition Close to 60% of the technical potential for the U.S. is in for limited supply chain resources. waters best developed with ? oating wind technology.

• To date, over 28 GW of offshore wind has been installed Federal agencies are advancing offshore leasing in Califor- in the U.K. and Europe since the ? rst commercial turbines nia, Oregon, the Gulf of Maine and several other locations that were commissioned in the early 1990s. The U.K. aims to will feature ? oating offshore wind solutions. The ? rst leases achieve 40 GW by 2030, and the European Union targets at are expected to be auctioned this year.

least 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. However, few realize that ? ve ? oating wind projects are al- • China, the current world’s largest offshore wind market, ready currently being progressed in the Atlantic and Paci? c – commissioned over 10 GW alone in 2021. Provincial plans three in state waters and two in federal waters. These projects 20 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • April 2022

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