Page 6: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Mar/Apr 2023)

5 7

MARKETS ANCHOR HANDLING TUGS © Igor Kardasov/AdobeStock

FLOATING OFFSHORE

WIND AND THE NEED

FOR HIGH-END AHTS

By Theodor Sørlie, Market Analyst, Fearnley Offshore Supply AS s the world continues to scramble for renewable This translates to developer commitments of roughly energy, foating offshore wind has emerged as 4,000 turbines installed by 2035 in Europe, while Asia will a key capacity enabler in the coming decades. contribute with 850 turbines. An interesting theme is mul-

With no major commercial scale projects cur- tiple countries leap-frogging straight to the foating space,

A rently in operations, the segment is largely based on gov- as opposed to developing an installed base of bottom-fxed ernments and developers ambitious project plans for the capacity initially. Examples of such countries include South future. Nonetheless, this market segment can offer vast op- Korea, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, which have all announced portunities to the world of offshore support vessels in both major projects to be commissioned towards the end of the near- and long-term prospects. decade, with no current fxed capacity operational.

In this piece, we will discuss the key opportunities and The leading developers within the space include oil and challenges related to offshore foating wind, in addition to gas majors such as Shell and Equinor, pure-play foating the potential implications for offshore vessel owners. Rys- developers such as Simply Blue Group, renewable energy tad Energy expects a global installed base of 13 GW in majors such as Iberdrola and renewable investment frms 2030, growing to 70 GW in 2035, and both governments such as Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. We believe and developers seem to agree on the fact that foating wind developers with existing maritime industry experience will can deliver green energy at scale in the future. have an advantage in commissioning projects according to 6 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM