Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020: Conference

Offshore & Floating
Wind Europe 2020

Conference
Report
Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020 Conference Report
Dear Attendee,
Thank you for your involvement in Offshore and Floating W ind Europe 2020.
Digital for this year, we had over 4,000 sign ups and more content than ever
before. This would not have been possible without our sponsors, speakers, and
media partners whose effort enabled a lively debate on the critical challenges and
opportunities present in our industry.
Over the two days in October we covered a range of topics for both fixed-bottom
and floating offshore wind, everything from new market development and finance,
to O&M and technology advances.
W ith so much content and virtual meetings taking place, we wanted to summarise
the key takeaways for you through this post-event report.
After the event finished, I personally felt incredibly optimistic. The industry has
position itself as being incredibly resilient and ambitious. Even though this year
has been heavily disrupted, the Energy Transition is full steam ahead with Offshore
and Floating W ind leading the way.
The next phase of rapid expansion into new global markets represents a significant
opportunity for all established players; financiers through to asset owners, OEMs
and supply-chain partners.
Similarly, the impressive improvements in floating wind technology offer the

opportunity to access new seas and thus markets both at home in Europe and
across the world – this is ready to happen now on a commercial-scale and
ambitious plans are already being actioned.
I hope you enjoy the report, and I look forward to continued collaboration.
Many thanks,
Luke Brett,
Project Director,
Reuters Events
Luke.brett@thomsonreuters.com
Thank you to our 2020 Sponsors
2
Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020

Conference Report
Contents:
Section 1: Global & Regional Outlooks.............................................................. 4
Section 2: Cost Trends & Outlooks. . .................................................................. 12
Fixed-Bottom Offshore Wind Summary............................................................... 13

Section 1: Reflections on 2020: COVID-19 and beyond .. .................................... 14
Section 2: The outlook for 2021 . . ..................................................................... 17
Section 3: Growth projections and sector considerations ................................... 19
Section 4: Financing ....................................................................................... 21
Section 5: Contracting .................................................................................... 24
Section 6: Supply-chain considerations ............................................................ 28
Section 7: O&M trends . . .................................................................................. 35
Floating Wind Summary ...................................................................................... 38

Section 1: Floating market outlook ................................................................... 39
Section 2: Derisking Floating ........................................................................... 44
Section 3: Fixed vs. Floating LCOE Comparison ................................................ 49
Section 4: Financing Floating . . ......................................................................... 50
Section 5: Market Readiness: Supply-Chain & Infrastructure .. ............................. 55
Section 6: Market Readiness: Connection & Grid Infrastructure .......................... 59
Section 7: Technical Concepts . . ....................................................................... 61
Section 8: Developer plans for floating.............................................................. 65
Section 9: Technology Innovations: Mooring Systems Case Study . . ..................... 69
Section 10: Floating Offshore Wind Outlook: Accelerating Commercialisation . . ..... 70
3
Section 1: Global & Regional Outlooks
• BloombergNEF (BNEF) forecasting indicates that the offshore wind industry has
been relatively robust against impact from the global COVID-19 pandemic.
• Most projects have continued construction as they would have pre-pandemic.
• The capacity pipeline remains stable with most capacity already financed
through to 2022 and some into 2023. Financing deals have continued to be
brokered throughout 2020 on future project builds.
• Under a single-wave pandemic scenario, BNEF forecast 193GW of globally

installed capacity by 2030. Under a multiple-wave scenario, 192GW is
expected to be installed by 2030. The least-case estimation under the enduring
pandemic scenario remains as high as 186GW, showing relatively limited impact
on total capacity buildout through 2030.
• BNEF data signals that the real impact of the pandemic is playing out in the
shift of capacity installation timelines, due to changes and delays in auction
and tender scheduling caused by practical restraints and in some cases knock-
on demand uncertainties.
• BNEF’s analysis of market-level cumulative installed capacity by 2030 indicates

China will be the biggest offshore wind market, reaching 39.5GW in all three
COVID-19 scenarios.
4
• The UK is expected to be the second largest offshore wind market globally

reaching 38.8GW by 2030.
• The US will likely occupy the third place, with 20.2 – 21.9GW of cumulatively
installed capacity, a remarkable ramp-up on today’s market size with traditional
markets including Germany, Taiwan and the Netherlands are expected to stay
strong, with new markets France, Japan and South Korea to propel up the
ranks by 2030.
• Project development timelines constructed by BNEF show that the UK’s

development trajectory will take 8-10 years at the earliest before commercial
operation is achieved if lease rights are secured in 2021.
• In France, it is anticipated that many of the permitting issues that have

hindered sector development are beginning to lift, which in turn is enabling
streamlining of a development timeline, enabling BNEF to position France as an
active market within this decade.
• BNEF have sized the global offshore wind sector as a $320 billion opportunity
across the decade based upon a cumulative installed capacity of between 186-
193GW and the CAPEX spend required to meet that buildout.
5
Market Deep Dive: The Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea Offshore Wind Declaration of Intent
On 30 September, the eight Baltic Sea countries and the EU

Commission signed a joint declaration of intent to accelerate the
build-out of offshore wind projects in the Baltic Sea. This is seen
as the first step in forming a unified offshore sector for the
Baltic basin.
“The reason why it is such an opportune
moment to hold this discussion around offshore
wind in Poland and the broader Baltic Sea area,
all of the potential players in the offshore wind
sector within the region have been present
yesterday in the Port of Szczecin in northwest
Poland, alongside key decision makers
such as Poland’s Minster of Climate, the EU
Commission’s Director General of Energy, senior politicians and industry executives from
Poland, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, Germany, and Lithuania.
This region which has historically been heavily reliant upon fossil-fuels, especially Poland,
is now positioning itself as part of the broader decarbonization trajectory.”
Poland’s story is really quite unique. It started with the energy policy of Poland released in
2009, a roadmap for the country’s energy strategy up to 2030, which had a rather generic
statement of intent for a good and stable framework for the offshore wind industry.
It has gone through many ups and downs, many geo-political tug of wars, through a
number of legislations which allowed the creation of sites for offshore wind development,
and has now needed up with a unique single legislative documentation, the Offshore W ind
Act, released in draft form in January 2020 and since gone through a number of sector,
industry and ministerial consultations.
We are currently waiting for this to be passed. At this stage it is looking like it will be a 25-
year CfD support period for offshore wind which will be divided in a similar way as we have
seen in the UK, we a feeder stage where some projects could receive specific support and
then systematically progressing through to auctions. On the way to those auctions Poland
has a huge challenge of creating an appropriate supply chain to give comfort to developers
to invest and build out the capacity.
It has been a long road, but I am incredibly excited about the fact that Poland will have
bespoke legislation, hopefully which will be enacted by the close of this year“.
6
An early market mover’s perspective

“We believe that our movement into the market
accelerated global focus on Poland’s offshore wind
potential.
Equinor’s approach to enter early was facilitated

through the JV with local player Polenergia, on what
I call Baltic triplets, Baltic 3, 2 and 1, which give us
the potential of 3GW.
The reason for us looking at Poland because the

fundamentals were right. The wind speeds are good in the Baltic Sea, water depths are
conducive to straightforward foundations, the supply-chain is already there with lots of
offshore wind companies based in Poland. The market fundamentals are there – the power
market demand is still growing, the ageing coal fleet will likely be decommissioned, and
that is meeting with growing decarbonization targets.
The Polish authorities have been really

cooperative and open with all players to establish
an offshore wind framework. That framework will
be adopted soon and will kickstart the market.
When we entered Poland, everyone asked about

the Polish energy policy which has been in the
making for a long time. That draft was released
in early September and provides two scenarios
for the Polish energy sector: slow and fast decarbonization transitions. The latter scenario
favors renewables, what I call the greener scenario. That states that by 2030, the share of
coal in the energy mix will reach 37% and by 2040 only 11%. That means a zero-emission
energy system needs to be built which gradually replaces coal and gas power plants. This
new system will be based on offshore wind and nuclear. You are looking at 8-11GW of
installed capacity of offshore wind, with investments of c. E30billion.
That gives investors like us and the supply-chain confidence that there will be a stable,
robust offshore wind sector in the market”.
7
Expanding the Baltic Sea portfolio

“It feels like this region is the right place to be
these days on a number of occasions. RWE are
targeting to be carbon free by 2040.
The Baltic Sea is one of our favorite places to be

and we already have operational wind farms in
Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
Regarding Poland we are very excited to be

part of the offshore wind journey, we have been
active in the Polish onshore sector for many years – 380MW in operation onshore.
We have a number of project applications in the pipeline. We would like now to see the
offshore act finalized by the end of year”.
The Lithuanian Story

“Here in Lithuania, the largest electricity
production source is already wind energy, so
we already know how to run economies based
around wind energy, and our national energy
strategy as well as our National Energy and
Climate Plan (NECP) submitted to the EU
Commission, continues to facilitate renewables
buildout. We aim for 45% of all energy needs
to be covered by renewables by 2030, well above the EU average target of 32%.
To meet these targets, we need a mix of renewable sources, solar, onshore wind, offshore
wind. We have consistent regulatory frameworks in place already for solar and onshore
wind, and our target now from a regulatory perspective is to create a fair and competitive
legal framework for offshore wind development with long-market visibility.
In June this year, the cabinet of ministers confirmed that we will auction 700MW of
capacity for auction in Q3, 2023, it will be one auction for the entire 138km² area in the
Baltic Sea. We have good resource of wind in the market, 30 km from the shore, with
water depths from 30m, and wind speeds are above 9m/second. It’s a good resource
and we are confident we can reach and LCOE below E50/MWh, which is good news for
our consumers. In Lithuania, we import a large chunk of our electricity, so renewable
energy and in particular offshore wind energy, is local, sustainable and now cost-effective
generation”.
8
The Irish Opportunity

“Ireland is a very interesting market. It is
in somewhat of a transition period at the
moment. They tried to capture the benefits
of their favorable wind conditions – relatively
shallow waters, relatively good ground
conditions and windy sites earlier on in the
decade and at the start of offshore wind’s
journey. Unfortunately, without regular and
stable policy support it didn’t take off.
Now that Ireland recognizes that it is not on course to meet its 2030 targets and a real
uphill journey to make its 2050 decarbonization targets there is a government impetus now
to support the industry and implement a fit for purpose planning regime as well as the RES
auctions, so effectively a CfD framework for revenue stabilization, and/or potentially some
sort of subsidized support.
From a resource perspective, it is a very interesting market, there is plenty of seabed there
and good windy sites. From a government policy perspective, all the signals are there.
There are some challenges around the grid along the East Coast, which is a challenge for
the operator and grid transmission operator there to ensure that there is connection for the
early developed capacity. That is currently being worked on and there is confidence that
will be resolved in the timeframes required”.
“Ireland has a target of 5GW by 2030. Also,

this week, the Northern Ireland government
announced with a target for 70% renewable
capacity by 2030, which means now the whole
island has aligned renewable targets which is
really good. We certainly see Ireland as a very
exciting market”.
9
Market Deep Dive: Taiwan – Offshore Wind Consultants Research
• Taiwan’s optimum wind resources are in

the northern part of the Taiwan Strait,
on the west coastline, the largest area
of developable capacity is situated off
the coast of Changhua County along
the Taiwan Strait.
• A n additional strong wind resource area

lies at the southern tip of the country
but the water depths in the locality
do not permit fixed-bottom wind and
would have to be serviced by floating
wind.
• The shallower water depths available

for fixed-bottom technologies are relatively limited, totaling around 10GW of
developable capacity.
• Taiwan currently has 5.5GW of offshore wind capacity in the development pipeline, with
commercial operations scheduled to be achieved in 2025 or thereafter. COVID-19 has
impacted construction work at some projects, but construction has remained ongoing
throughout the pandemic.
• OWC have highlighted the following features of the third stage regulation framework:
- Each project will be subject to a capacity limitation of 0.5GW, with each developer
limited to a total 2GW during the 2026-2030 period.
- To qualify for auction participation developers should approval EIA or approval with
condition EIA and self-capital should be or over 5% of total investment amount.
- A successful EIA does not give exclusivity to a developer, with a single site
permitted to undergo multiple EIA’s from different development parties.
- Currently there are no restrictions relating to technology type, with developers able
to choose either floating or fixed type platforms. Swancor have announced that
they are currently assessing whether fixed or floating technology is optimum for the
Formosa 4 project.
- Extra High Voltage land cable, subsea cable, offshore electrical equipment,
foundation materials, and component and materials for WTGs fall within localization
requirements for the third stage regulation.
- Grid connection points and capacities are expected to be disclosed by close-2020

following investigations from the Taiwan Power Company.

10
LCOE
• As of 1H 2020, France has the highest offshore wind LCOE globally reflecting the high
feed-in tariff (Fit) of those early projects. Current LCOE levels across other European
markets are at fairly similar levels, although Germany is incurring slightly higher levels
mostly reflective of the most recently financed projects which essentially were still in
the FiT system.
CAPEX
• BNEF analysis indicates that CAPEX has not fallen in a linear fashion since the early
days of project development. CAPEX levels peaked in 2012 reflecting projects moving
into deeper waters further from shore.
• The combination of technological advancements such as bigger turbines and auctions

and tenders bringing competition into the sector have since that point brought down
costs and now in 2020 BNEF data shows convergence of CAPEX levels across markets.
• BNEF forecast that CAPEX will continue to decline at an all-in rate of 16% on current
levels by 2030 (-18% without transmission), driven by the installation of larger capacity
turbines in spite of the push into more complex offshore terrains.
• Under a like-for-like scenario whereby projects continue to be developed under the

same technological and siting conditions as today, a 23% decrease on CAPEX would
be realized by 2030 (-20% without transmission).
• As of today, offshore wind CAPEX is roughly double that of onshore wind. BNEF
forecast that gap will stay at a similar range out to 2030.
11
Section 2: Cost Trends & Outlooks

Turbine prices
• Turbine prices have followed a similar trajectory to CAPEX, whereby a steady decline
pattern has not unfolded. Following the introduction of competitive auctions and
tenders, offshore turbine prices have dropped in the latter years of this decade.
• Forecasts indicate that for every doubling of cumulative capacity an 11% decline in
offshore turbine prices will be realized.
• BNEF anticipate that the growth of European O&M hubs is driving up efficiencies and
driving down offshore costs a as a pool of expertise is leveraged across markets.
Capacity factors
• Capacity factors are expected to rise from 2022-2050. This is not only a reflection of
bigger turbines further from shore harnessing stronger winds from taller hub heights,
but BNEF are forecasting greater swept areas to power output to change as turbines
have bigger rotors they can capture more energy at lower wind speeds translating into
higher capacity factor. If you couple that with taller hub heights from bigger turbines,
then higher capacity outputs are achieved.
• Based upon the historical progression of turbine models with regards to output levels,
today’s latest turbines could reach up to 18MW by 2025.
12
Five Predictions as We Enter the Age of the Great Energy Transition
Fixed-Bottom Offshore
Wind Summary
Section 1: Reflections on 2020: COVID-19 and

beyond
“One of the key surprises has been the
ease with which we can work from remote
locations, including home. For many people
that has been a welcomed discovery this
year.
Beyond that, I think broadly speaking

everything has been on track at the sector
level. The Dutch tender went ahead as
scheduled, the UK Round 4 is going ahead, as is ScotW ind. There doesn’t seem to
have been any impediment from the pandemic upon governments delivering their
programs and meeting their ambitions for offshore wind in Europe”.
“2020 has been a very exciting year for

Eneco because so much has happened.
The first important thing is winning
Hollandse Kust Noord (HKN) in a
consortium with Shell (CrossW ind) to build
the 795MW HKN project. It represents one
of the first fully merchant risk projects we
have committed to and made a financial
decision on, so we have been really happy with that.
In March the acquisition of Eneco by a consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and

Chubu Electric Power happened and was not delayed at all by COVID-19.
In terms of projects under construction, that started challenging bids because

as soon as you have a pandemic like this, contractors will force majeure and
there you go with your risk that you have to take on, which took some time to
work through. We negotiated with the government to get longer stretches for
construction than the two weeks on/two weeks off set out under the pandemic,
and that worked out well, we are on budget and on time meaning that we will hit
expected commercial operation dates with these projects.
The final aspect is on the business development side, which is a bit more
challenging, because it is always better to go and meet people face-to-face,
to network, this is what we missed most. On the other hand, our business
development operations are working efficiently via video communications”.
14
“2020 started on a high for EDF

Renewables with a 50% acquisition of
the Codling offshore wind farm in Ireland
alongside our partners Fred Olsen,
and that was really one of the largest
acquisitions in terms of gross capacity
for the company and then set us on a
workstream in terms of trying to deliver
against the assumptions we had for
delivery of that project. And no one could
of course foresee what was coming our way in terms of COVID-19 and what that
might mean for delays for new government policy in Ireland. There have been
some delays there, some the upshot of COVID-19, some owing to government
reformation, and of course what that means from a stakeholder management
perspective in terms of both consenting and from policy direction has created
challenges for us at Codling.
But offshore wind continues to be a very collaborative industry across

stakeholders and supply-chain and that’s demonstrated in how we have managed
construction risks throughout the pandemic, we’ve taken a very collaborative
approach with our suppliers, we have carried out financial health checks with our
suppliers and discussed with them how best to manage both financial exposure
and technical risks and how to work in a COVID-19 secure way.
Offshore continues to innovative, to collaborate and to deliver which is really

impressive in a time like this”.
“2020 has been an incredible year for

RWE. We have announced we want to be
carbon neutral by 2040. 2020 saw the
merger of our two renewable businesses;
EON Climate and Renewables and Innogy
Renewables joined forces to become RWE
Renewables. So, we are now the third
largest renewables player in Europe and second biggest offshore wind player in
the world. Despite the pandemic everything went smoothly with that integration.
It has also been a great year for offshore wind at RWE. This week we announced
we have signed the lease with the Crown Estate here in the UK for four new
extension projects. We expect those projects to bring significant benefits to the
economy, representing multi-million investments and bringing lots of new jobs to
the UK”.
15
“Offshore wind is actually in a very

strong growth phase and mid-term
the electricity demand is growing
driven by globalization, webization
and electrification, and we are all clear
that we need more renewable energy
and less carbon-based energy. For us,
the European Green Deal is a further
testament to curbing carbon emissions,
and we believe offshore wind will play an important part of that.
If we look back at COVID-19 pandemic, what we can learn from it is the

importance of thorough planning and acting swiftly, and we believe that for climate
change the same applies”.
“I think that the pandemic has taught us

all a big lesson, not just the offshore wind
industry, because what it has really shown
us is how a natural or external event can
have such a massive impact on our way of
life and our economies.
I think that is quite relevant when you

think about climate change, because
most people will recognize that climate
change is going to have an even bigger impact on our way of life and economies.
If Covid-19 is a tidal wave, then climate change is a tsunami.
Iberdrola, and probably a lot our peers throughout the industry, have found that
our business models have been really resilient throughout. That shows you that
companies like ours who are investing in the green transition are on the right track.
We barely missed a step operationally, we’ve maintained a profit guidance, we’ve
maintained our investment plans to invest E10 billion in clean energy infrastructure
on-track. We are still employing thousands of people, we haven’t taken any public
money, in fact we have donated money to the public health endeavors.
So, our model has been very resilient. We’ve managed to keep our operational
assets running how we would have expected them to had there not been a
pandemic. We’ve met our construction milestones, including finishing off the
construction of the East Anglia ONE offshore project in the UK”.
16
Section 2: The outlook for 2021
“In Europe, we have been in confidential

negotiations on something which we are
hoping to close out and announce by the
end of this year. That is our main focus.
We are also starting to think about

what we can do in Germany because
the auctions start again in 2021. Whilst
nobody owns any projects now in
Germany, we have a stepping right which enables us to try and get our projects
back. We have registered our interest in Scot W ind in the UK, and there are other
areas in Europe we are looking into”.
“In 2021, construction at the HKN project

will begin. In terms of development,
France has very interesting tenders
coming up and the whole world is looking
at it because it is in the CfD market and
everyone finds that very interesting. We
are in partnership negotiations there”.
“2021 for EDF Renewables will focus on

the continued construction of the NNG
project in Scotland. We have started
foundation installation there which we will
continue into 2021 and begin to install
turbines there and work on the onshore
elements.
Otherwise the focus will be on continued

development activities. So we are actively looking at the Round 4 new leasing
opportunity and we have registered our interest in Scot W ind, and those present
a unique opportunity to secure large-scale rights in the UK and we are very
interested in seeing whether we can be successful in doing that. A lot of work this
year has gone into that”.
17
“2021 is going to be a very busy

year. W ith construction, we have two
projects in this phase, Triton Knoll in
the UK and Kaskasi in Germany. There
is going to be a lot of development
going on – working on our existing
portfolio of development projects
and also trying to acquire new
opportunities. RWE have committed to
invest €5billion in the next 3 years.
What I think is exciting for 2021 is the number of new lease opportunities. So, the
auctions that are coming up, the UK and Scot W ind, auctions in the US, Denmark,
France, Germany, Japan, grid allocation in Taiwan – lots going on”.
“There’s so much to be excited about.

We’ve just finished building East Anglia
ONE which is great, but we don’t have
much time to celebrate that because
we are onto two other projects we
are building. We have just kicked off
construction on a 500MW offshore wind
project in France and we are just about
to go into the construction phase of a
500MW offshore project in the German Baltic Sea.
Over the course of the next 12-months, we are expecting to begin construction of
our Vineyard W ind project, an 800MW farm in the US, which will be the first large-
scale US project.”
18
Section 3: Growth projections and sector

considerations
“If you look at the energy planning of

many countries, offshore wind is going
to play a very important role in energy
transitions.
We see more and more merchant

markets will emerge, and as we saw in
the recent Dutch tender there were only
two contenders left, it is a big merchant
risk and if you see the impact falling oil prices has on electricity prices it is very
insecure. So that is maybe something for governments to think about”.
“The challenges are going to come in

on the policy side, you need to keep
incentivizing. Renewable deployment
targets need to go hand in hand with
policies that lead to electrification. Lots of
talk around hydrogen and green hydrogen,
with offshore wind earmarked for the
feedstock for electrolysis.
At some point you will run out of monopiles and jackets sites and you need to
go to floating, which will open up offshore wind to new parts of the world. For
example, Brazil has a lot of deep water and a lot of engineering expertise from the
offshore oil and gas market. So floating is needed to open those sorts of markets”.
19
“As a market leader we have 17GW in

the pipeline, these are preferred supplier
agreements and contracts, and what is
interesting is that a lot of this is from
abroad. We have 4.3GW contracted
from the US, sizeable contracts in
Taiwan and France, and we are now
seeing other countries like Japan, south
Korea, Ireland, Poland, coming into the
market which makes me very excited because if you think of COVID-19 as a storm
it is a very small storm compared to the climate change crisis, and we all need to
get ready for the green transformation ahead of us, within which offshore wind is
going to be an important pillar.
Turbine Evolution
“We are very proud of our SG 14-222 DD turbine. We have secured almost 4GW
of capacity on 3 continents and this turbine really allows us to reach into new
dimensions. It has a 14MW rating which with power boost we can get up to 15MW,
a 222m rotor with blades as long 108m, and the rotor swept areas is 39,000 sq.
meters equivalent of 5.5 football pitches.
We rely on our strategy of evolution platform by platform and then adding in new
innovations. For example, if we take the blade, we are basing it on our proven
blade design of which we have many thousand units installed, and now we also
have carbon integrated to make the blade lighter and stiffer.
We first applied this with our 11MW turbine. And then we add some new
innovations including new air flows and blade structure in the blade and that is our
combination to make it a very innovative but proven blade to deliver a very reliable
product”.
20
Section 4: Financing
M&A activities
“We have seen some really strong
activity over the last 18 months from a
variety of parties. Oil and gas majors
such as Total and BP doing meaningful
deals earlier this year. Financial
sponsors such as Greencoat buying
SSE’s stake in the Walney Offshore W ind
Farm.
Asian entrants such as the Green Investment Group acquired 40% of Iberdrola’s
East Anglia One project, becoming the majority shareholder”.
“If we look at the kind of projects

that are out in the market it is mainly
projects which have secured a form
of subsidy over the last 3-4 years and
I guess given the general context,
renewable projects especially those
with subsidies are a safe place to
invest, so I would imagine that M&A
activity is going to continue.
Particularly given that when people are bidding for these subsidies, more and more
the original developers are generally assuming some form are exit and sell-down.
All of the projects that have or are in the process of securing subsidy in the past
year or so will likely be looking forward to a partial sell-down in the near-term”.
“So I see the appetite for the asset

class is still very strong, you see that
in the capital markets, utilities or pure
play renewable energy focus their share
prices are sky high, so you can see that
the attractiveness for the capital markets
is very strong.
Interest from lenders, even insurance

companies, the volumes of equity being raised by investment managers are very
high at the moment.The attractiveness of the offshore wind industry is scale”.
21
Merchant Risk Exposure Considerations

“If we look at the landscape for offshore
wind and renewables growth, a lot of
investment is going to be needed and it
won’t all be done on the balance sheet of
developers like ourselves.
The challenge we see ahead of us is that

subsidies are now a lot lower than they
have been in the past, but also in some
cases they aren’t there. So how do we bring these projects to market and how
do we continue to grow the industry and continue the decarbonization of our
economies without that guaranteed income. What other types of mechanisms are
we going to have to look at to continue the investment flow for these projects?”.
“The current activity in my opinion is

driven by the need for private capital
at low cost of equity to invest, mainly
driven by ESG requirements, but
also because of that offshore wind
developers have now included in their
mind that they partner at some point
with these sorts of investment parties.
And this is a driver because when they
are bidding into these various subsidy pots, they are including into their return
proceeds from financial investors joining them at FiD or COD”.
The Scale Effect

“When we raised our first mandate, we
had more than 50 investors and only one
had a policy in relation to energy. In our
latest mandate we have the same number
of investors and now they all have some
form of energy policy.
Energy is huge for these types of

investors, and they know that offshore
wind gives them the scales they require to implement their energy strategies. It’s a
huge driver, the outbreak has made that even stronger.”
22
European Appeal
“From a purely offshore wind perspective,
Europe has been the cradle of the industry,
there’s a huge amount of knowledge and
expertise here, not just in finance but
technically.
Our experience with talking to many

of the finance parties is that they are
interested in learning, and learning about
the technology, about how you deploy large volumes of offshore wind and how
they can translate that back to their home markets. So, I think a large driver has
been about what can be understand and export. We can see this in practice now,
and on a global basis, particularly in APAC there’s a lot of activity and projects
underway which often have partners involved from European utilities, but actually
to a large extent driven by the decarbonization of the markets themselves.
I would say this is a testament to the success the industry has had in bringing
down the overall LCOE of offshore wind and it’s made it something which is
a much more viable for a globalized industry rather than a European focused
industry which is largely dependent upon subsidy. It isn’t easy to say that we are
going to be subsidy free, but it is something which allows the technology to be
deployed at scale, globally.”
Financing in a post-subsidy market

“I don’t think in terms of post subsidy
world it will just be about the windfarm,
it will be also about what can we do with
the energy and what innovations can we
make for new revenue opportunities.
Everyone is talking about green

hydrogen. Can you have hydrogen
produced at scale for offshore wind and does it then help your business case? Or
are we adding additional risk to projects and therefore deterring investors from this
asset class? That is one of the things we need to look at – how do you stabilize
the revenue for the projects against a volatile forward price curve? Because if we
do that you can continue the flow of investment into the sector.”
“I think the purpose of a subsidy is to implement a sector in a way that is

competitive. In the case of offshore wind that is an industry that has relied on
subsidy for the past 10 years, it is something we have seen with PV, with onshore
wind, so I don’t see any difference. The size of turbines offshore are driving the
subsidy coming down, operating at scale, leveraging scale breakthroughs.”
23
Section 5: Contracting
The move towards standardized contracts

“Other industries have standard
contracts with dedicated clauses. Of
course, we recognize that a standard
contract would not just be plug and play,
you would have to adjust somehow with
for example, riders and extra clauses”.
“To a certain degree, yes. We have good

experience in standardized contracts that
we are utilizing from oil and gas. I believe
that it is the single most important factor
when it comes to reducing costs in the
contracting.
For offshore wind, where you often have

a master contract strategy, with 6,8, 10
or more contracts spanning best case a
couple of months or a year or more negotiating, I believe the potential for time
saving and cost saving from standard contracts is great”.
“What we are convinced about is there

are a lot of benefits involved in working
towards standard contracts. At the
same time, we will always have to be
aware of the fact that there are some
specific regulatory requirements that will
always require some further tailoring,
whether that’s local jurisdictions,
maritime law or grid connection, for
example”.
24
“There would be advantages in standard

contracts, in turnaround times, common
understanding of clauses over time.
But I would also note that these were

also people with a common interest
sitting on either the operator or non-
operator side of the equation for different
projects and they were able to negotiate those terms in a fair and just way as they
knew that they would sit on opposite sides of the table depending on what project
it was”.
The JV Impact on Contracting

“As of now, a lot of players in the
industry have experience now also in
contracting so we start from certain
templates or previous contracts, all
of which we negotiated on in the past
just on our own side. On these JVs,
these larger structures, there is lots
of us players coming together, and
that’s probably a good thing in terms of
what we can learn from each other, for the betterment of the market. But there is
probably quite a way to go in reconciling all the differences between the partners
and how they go about procurement and contracting. I am hopeful that it will lead
to a better understanding in the market of what good contracting is”.
“As the size of offshore projects get

larger and larger globally, the number of
lawyers involved increases, the number
of JVs increase, the number of partners
involved increases and that creates a
degree of negotiation friction where
there are different parties competing for
different reasons, particularly if there is
project financing.
And if there were common terms of course that process would speed up. You
would only have to negotiate on a few deviations. The question is whether we can
get to a common term”.
25
Standardized contracting for TSAs

“I would say that EPC contracts are more
generic and where it would be easier to
have a common ground. I believe, for
example, with Turbine Supply Agreements
(TSAs) most developers and OEMs will
have their own versions which are already
functioning. So maybe a generic TSA
will be harder and less advantageous to
parties to generate than EPC contracts”.
“I would say that there might be an

intermediate step for us, that being
a framework agreement between an
OEM and a particular developer which
addresses a developers particular
needs but across multiple projects
or jurisdictions. I see some of our
customers seeing a real commercial
advantage in their terms and conditions that they are not wanting to share that or
dilute that”.
Offshore nuances
“The concept of standardization should
not exclude customization, i.e. to
accommodate different developers and
suppliers risk appetites, values, work
cultures, and to keep the commercial
tailoring open.
The question is, should It be more of a

roadmap for the industry. I am not certain what is possible to achieve, what is the
starting point, that should be the first question?”
26
“If you look back at how the first

agreements developed in US onshore
oil and gas, it was a collection of 17-18
company drafts and a group of landmen
appointed 7 people to compare those
and come up with a common draft which
addressed the points of difference.
Ultimately that was put to a committee
and adopted by a professional body and if you were going to go down this path
that might be a process but are we in the same position? The variety of players
involved in offshore wind and their core businesses are much vaster, which
complicates things, and reduces the opportunity for common overlap.”
27
Section 6: Supply-chain considerations
Early onboarding of supply-chain

“As an industry we have been very focused
on health and safety and quality and doing
things properly from the outset. And we
are very good at engaging our supply-chain
through the prices of making that happen.
What we’ve taken from this is that from

very early on you need to get your whole
supply-chain together, you need to
acknowledge what the challenges are, you
need to acknowledge what the outcomes are you’re trying to achieve, and then
work together to plan and implement a way of working taking into account of all
the restrictions. And because we had so much buy-in from our supply-chain and
because we’ve always taken that approach, we’ve pretty much managed to keep
everything moving in a safe way. It was disrupted, it was interrupted, it might
have costed a bit more and was slower and less efficient, but it got done when it
needed to get done and in a safe way.”
Supply-chain management in a globalizing sector

“Certainly as we move towards new
global markets in the coming years we
are considering on the development
side is where are those pinch points
might be in terms of vessel availability,
manufacture capacity, impacts upon
project timings, and how do we best
manage the risk around if we don’t walk
things early enough we might miss out
for the opportunities to develop at an optimum level.
The global development of offshore wind definitely makes those questions around
pinch points come in an earlier point then previously. You do certainly hear positive
noises from the supply chain that they recognize the changing demand of the
market and managing their client requirements.”
28
“The local content aspect is an interesting

topic and is a bit of dual edged sword.
Discussions with a major OEM, what they
said is that they need two large-scale
manufacturing facilities globally. It almost
doesn’t matter where they are. The issue
about supply is in getting facilities large
enough to reach the economies of scale
and build in the efficiencies required in the production line – and then you can ship
your blades and nacelles wherever needed. That would be the most efficient and
cost-efficient mode of manufacturing. But that doesn’t sit well with pretty much
every country. Local content criteria built into bid requirements. So, when you
have every country looking out for its own interests that might go against what is
best objectively at the industry level of fewer but bigger facilities.”
Striking a balance between lower subsidies and accelerating job

creation
“Every single market has a slightly
Lara Juergens, different approach to raising and setting
Senior Energy Analyst,
subsidies to enhance local supply-
EIC
chain support. Looking at COVID-19 it
has highlighted some of the limitations
associated with a very globalized supply-
chain, where if there are restrictions
i.e. shutdown of fabrication yards in a
certain country, then they can have potential impact on projects.
But I think in the long-term it shouldn’t necessarily be an either/or. I assume that a

lot of developers would very naturally look for local companies on the component
supply, fabrication and services side of things and I think as the sector grows
we will see more of investment into local supply-chains to support the capacity
buildout, but it is something which needs to be supported through investment
whether that be a form of subsidy or other type of investment.”
29
“I think all developers want to have as

much local content as possible within
their windfarms. It is easier, but on
the other side you have the auctions
for subsidies which brings down the
prices, so we must go for the very very
cheapest item because of the high level
of competition.
It is a contradiction you have between bringing down the cost of offshore wind
via auctions whilst trying to build up the local supply-chain. We try to say to the
Scottish Government, maybe we should be awarded on the lowest price and then
be rewarded for the more local content we can put into the project. Because there
is a fundamental conflict in the current auction systems which does not facilitate
building up the local supply-chains. I am sure all the developers would prefer to
have 100% local content if it were feasible. It’s really a problem.”
“From a Scottish Government

perspective, I think we are no different
from any other government whereby
we want our slice of our cake when it
comes to local content on a project.
The consumer is ultimately paying for

these subsidies and they do expect a
return in economic benefits to go along
with that instead of simply a case of that money going to other countries. There
needs to be a greater momentum politically now for developers to be able to do
more for local content buildout.
There is also a call to arms for the local supply-chain for them to be producing to
the quality and the price that the T ier 1s need. They need to play an active role”.
30
The role of local content in contracting models

“On the EPCi side, we do see EPCI
Lara Juergens, contracting and offerings still being
Senior Energy Analyst, used where you have new entrants and
EIC
new developers to offshore wind, and in
these cases you see T ier 1 contractors
can gain a bit more ownership over local
content at projects and control over the
supply-chain risk.”
“We are moving away from EPCI

contracts towards multi-contracts and
it is for several reasons. Firstly, we have
better cost control when we have direct
contract with suppliers and can get the
smaller specialized, smaller local content
companies into the supply-chain because
it is difficult if you go through and EPCI
they are used to going to a specific supplier for a specific service and then you try
to get them to use another supplier and that becomes complex, they opt to stick
to companies they now.
I think multi-contracting will open up a lot of doors for more local content.
Developers need to have localization built into their core values and strategy. It will
not happen by itself; the effort has to be there to drive it forward”.
“It will be interesting to see where you

have leasing rounds coming up i.e. Scot
W ind and UK round 4, we are getting
new entrants into the market like Total,
and whether that experience from an oil
and gas background will come in and
ruffle some feathers. There is definitely
a growing momentum about getting
local content in and the EPCI model is
not usually the easiest model to break into for those companies who are looking to
enter the space.”
31
Non-European players move into Europe

In the fabrication space in recent years we have seen the draw of European
companies to the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions, with those regions
benefitting from the building of jacket foundations from European expertise.
It is good to see South Korean company SeAH signing an MOU with Able UK to
establish monopile production facility on the South Bank of the Humber bucking
that trend and that’s obviously a move made on the opportunity level present in
the UK.
What is going to be more difficult is to convince companies with facilities set up in

the North Sea region make the move for example from the Netherlands to the UK,
because the geographical imperative of moving will be less”.
“Ireland is starting up and the supply-chain in the UK is set to benefit from the
market there, Norway is coming up with auctions there next year, and the UK
supply-chain is well positioned to benefit from lots of these markets.
I think the potential is there for the UK to be that European supply-chain hub”.
Maintaining existing facilities & risk apportioning

“Every company is going to find things
challenging in the current COVID-19
environment. The fabrication sector
in the UK and continental Europe
and their draw to the Asian region for
facilities is a worrying trend from a
government perspective. It is a worry,
but government are trying to support
companies to win opportunities.
Whether we become a lot more stringent on the sustainability element content
could work to help domestic players. Uncertainty around the timing of the CfD
rounds has been a stumbling block to supply-chain investment because of the lack
of transparency and stability.
There is a concern that parts of supply-chain are moving away, but the
encouraging news with the South Korean MOU which bucks that trend is
welcomed”.
32
“You can also say the technology

development will kill a lot of the labor
heavy fabrication side. If the South
Korean company opens the monopile
facility in the UK they will be able to
manufacture monopiles 17m in diameter
and 150m long, then they will outrange
the jacket foundation anyway because
suddenly you can use it in deeper waters etc.
I think it is much more about the fabrication sites being innovative and adapting
to new methods, because if they stick to manufacturing jackets, they will overtime
disappear because of market need, i.e. substations are now seen on monopiles.
Fabricators need to be frontrunners, develop, and adapt to stay in the game.
Technology is minimizing the number of jobs”.
“Innovations and project development is a headache for supply-chain companies

who need to continuously adapt their
Lara Juergens,
Senior Energy Analyst,
offerings and services. On the one hand,
EIC the unit decreases at projects as turbine
capacity grows is a challenge, but on the
other that is offset by growing volumes of
projects in the pipeline. That growth and
capacity will hopefully preserve those
areas of supply-chain.
That reliability around project viability is paramount, project consenting has caused
some uncertainty of late”.
33
Supply-chain preparation strategies

“The supply-chain has been firmly
committed over the past decade to driving
down the cost of offshore wind. So, I think
a continuing focus on driving technological
optimizations and efficiencies into their
processes in order to allow us to keep
costs coming down.
And that’s really important because we

need to be able to demonstrate that we can be and are working towards being,
and are already in some cases, the lowest cost large-scale low carbon generating
technologies.
What we are going to see more of as offshore wind moves into new markets, is
requirement for industrialization and localization of content, so the supply-chain
has to think very carefully about what their long-term industrial strategy is so they
can help us not just meet our requirements for clean electricity but also contribute
to economic growth and prosperity in the markets where offshore wind is going to
be really big”.
34
Section 7: O&M trends

Digitizing O&M
“Until recently we have been fully backed
by the OEMs in terms of O&M and now, we
have moved into a self-perform strategy
which led us to look at a new digital
solution.
That strategy move was driven by a need

for greater control over our assets and a
more holistic management of the assets
and better financial commitment control. To get there, challenges include the sheer
volumes of faults we expect to see and using the knowledge effectively to ensure
that we can drive a first-time fix rate to the turbines”.
Alec Miller “Our goal is to help renewable energy

VP of Product producers use analytics more effectively
NarrativeWave to improve automation.
The four major pillars of the solution we

put in place are:
1) It starts with an analytics engine, focused on bringing in this volume of data,
figuring out the correct tags, correct format.
2) All that information is moved over into a rule’s engine, which can be simple
or complex, those rules are assigning the right corrective action to the right
turbine and the associated fault codes.
3) That are creating events where you can put those into operations, so you
can assign a workflow, corrective actions.
4) And finally, you can add knowledge into a feedback system which comes
back from both engineers and field technicians”.
35
“The value-added outcomes are time. We

have created a standardized and automated
response to faults so that we can react
faster. This saves time both onshore and
offshore deciding how to respond to faults
and shortening time to get ready.
Simplifying the operations by focusing on

the most probable correction action and
this creates knock-on value for supply-chain and stores, so we can have the right
parts in inventory, having the right kit on the turbine ready reducing costs and
complexity, and repeat visits”.
Operational strategies and innovations in an industrialized age
Sam Strivens “One of the key factors is distance from

Manager - Logistics shore of future sites, so that requires
O&M a very different operational profile in
Carbon Trust terms of your O&M strategy and vessel
requirements. Increasing the transfer
height and the sea states all need to be
done in a safe manner”.
Knut Ragnar “There has been a development. From

Austreng Equinor’s first offshore project we had
Leader of Digitalisation, a traditional setup with STV’s from
Performance and shore. W ith Dudgeon we took a different
Analytics
approach using SOVs, which is working
Equinor
well but of course it is an expensive
vehicle. There are big projects coming
along, like the Burbo Bank Extension,
there it is SOV which is the backbone
of operational logistics. Luckily, we are seeing innovations coming out i.e. in the
walk to work, better access. I think there is still work to be done in the vessels you
need to distribute crew to SOVs.
We can build on our oil and gas experience here to tackle these challenges.
Working far from shore and with big vessels is what we are used to. The
combination of wind and oil and gas is beneficial, but it is definitely a new ball
game”.
36
Digitalization and changing asset profiles

“The goal of this approach is to help be
Alec Miller
proactive. The first thing is making sure
VP of Product
you are using the organization’s knowledge
NarrativeWave
very effectively e.g. one of the things we
are doing is looking at the faults that are
happening on the turbine and looking
towards what is the most probable
corrective action using the past history that
is in the data. The goal is to find the best corrective action that is most likely to
work on this turbine and therefore be prepared with the right people, right kit, right
tools, because they are so far offshore you need to get it right.
I think the challenge is connecting the knowledge in the field with the performance
engineers and asset managers and by putting those things together you can do
really great things.
The future of this is using these digital tools”.
O&M in a subsidy-free environment

“We have all seen the power prices in
Knut Ragnar
Europe recently. So far, we have been
Austreng
Leader of Digitalisation, focused on optimizing production and
Performance and that has been very easy to forecast and
Analytics try to schedule maintenance during low
Equinor wind speed periods.
This new regime of merchant markets is

going to shift that approach. Exactly how
to deal with it is a good question, but it
definitely requires a more holistic view on the markets and the broader situation,
going beyond the normal engineer and technician type of skillset. And I think
there you definitely need some form of digital solution linking information from
power price forecasting, weather markets and the technical side, and from that
synthesize the information to form directives”.
37
Five Predictions as We Enter the Age of the Great Energy Transition
Floating Wind Summary

Section 1: Floating market outlook

The road to commercialization
“The first tender we will see next year
in Brittany, France, if not this year with
pre-qualification. It is in advanced
preparation and a 250MW site. This
will be the first commercial site and I
am sure more will follow post-2025”.
“There will be more and more floating

projects but we will need that kickstart
from governments, I believe that we
will see that soon, and that those
projects will be called commercial,
not so much because of their funding
arrangements but because of their
scale”.
“In 2021 we will be looking at what

floating wind can look like for EDF
in the UK. We have a testing and
demonstrator platform at Blyth with
5 turbines, and we are looking into
whether the array development there
might look favorably there upon a
floating opportunity and whether then
we could do a stepping stone approach where we continue development from
what would be 5 floating turbines to something which looks more pre-commercial
ahead of the anticipated commercialization of floating wind by the end of the
decade”.
39
Sufficiency of current development site pipeline
“It is more a question of what kind of sites

than numbers? Because if you look at the
mechanisms which are coming, i.e. the
CfD which is currently under consultation,
maybe there’s different levels of size,
where you have testing of scale and
introduction of design with 1, 2 or 3 units
to get that first step in, and then you have
those projects at 100, 200MW. But where do we get those sites in when you have
20-30 companies who want to get in and build and deploy these?”
“The answer is an unequivocal no.

There is not enough investments being
made into our industry if we want to
decarbonize on time.
My estimate is that we are at a global

level making about a quarter of the levels
of investment needed to decarbonize
over the next 40-years. So, we haven’t actually in Europe addressed this issue
of how we bring more money into our industry, how do we accelerate, how to we
incentivize SMEs to do the best research to send the drones underwater etc. We
are nowhere near where we need to be, and we as an industry should be pointing
that out to politicians. The policy framework across Europe is not as robust as is
needs to be.
40
“In Round 4 in the UK, we are

specifically excluding floating. There
will be no floating projects coming
through England, Wales and Northern
Ireland.
There will be projects coming through

Scot W ind and that’s great, because
some of those projects will start to
be of scale which is what we need. What we don’t need is a decade of test and
demonstration. If we spend another decade of doing small, pilot projects, then I
am sure every country will be very proud of their successful demonstration, but we
will not gain the momentum which is so desperately needed here. We do need to
scale up to the 250-300MW scale projects here and then to the 500MW, and then
to the 1GW+. Because only by doing that will we drive the cost down and make
floating competitive. The simple message is, floating does work, it can work on the
biggest turbines in the world, we can float the 9.5-10MW turbines, and we need to
scale up to drive down costs and make the technology credible worldwide”.
“Sites for floating is a less critical point

then for fixed-bottom.
Floating creates less opposition. It is

further from the coast, so the visual
impact is less. For fishing grounds, the
overlap of ocean usage is less.
Finding sites will be easier because of

this. I am less concerned that we don’t have enough sites”.
41
Market Deep Dive: The Celtic Sea

Simply Blue Energy have two areas of
activity. The Blue Gem 1 project with
Total off the coast of Pembrokeshire,
Wales.
“The Celtic Sea is not a well-known or

understood area by our industry. Simply
Blue Energy started off in the Celtic Sea
looking at wave energy. We realized that
wave energy is still some way off and therefore we fixed our minds on floating
wind.
We believe that there is 150-250GW of potential wind capacity to be exploited

from the Celtic Sea, comparing favorable with the North Sea. Taking into account
certain considerations, Simply Blue Energy believe there is a realizable pot of
50GW of offshore wind power across UK and Irish waters.
Given that the UK wants to develop 75GW, clearly the Celtic Sea could play a big
part of that target.”
• The wind system in the Celtic Sea is asynchronous with that in the North Sea
which helps with balancing the grid and the move towards a hydrogen economy
with power being generated at sea and converted to hydrogen on land to move
towards a low carbon economy.
• There is also the potential given the Celtic Sea’s position on the Northwest tip
of Europe, to send harvested power through interconnectors into France, the
UK, Ireland either as power or hydrogen.
• In all this energy is very important but the economic opportunity for the region
is also important. We call it a steppingstone approach, whereby the supply-
chain can grow with projects and thus capturing economic opportunity locally.
• There are still some uncertainties whether ports and shipyards in the region the
capabilities have to onboard these projects, but it is important that the decision
makers are aware that the possibilities are there to regenerate areas. Even if a
port cannot carry out fabrication, assembly is an activity that can bring activity
to a region.
42
“We will not be active for AR4, but we are looking to be ready for AR5. For the
Celtic Sea, we think that the first projects will go into the sea with AR5.
In the Celtic Sea we would encourage the Crown Estate to move beyond the
100MW test and demonstration projects currently available to enable the build out
of a regional supply-chain
Unlike the North Sea there is no oil and gas sector legacy, so significant
investment will he required in the Celtic Sea region to enable the ports, shipyards
and supply-chain to be capable of serving these projects”.
43
Section 2: Derisking Floating

Risk mitigation in the pathway to commercializing floating
“For floating wind, the new and
innovative part is the floater and
mooring system, which invariably means
a fair few risk compared to fixed-
bottom, and of course these risks have
to be addressed. I think we have made
good progress in the past 5-years
with demonstration farms in the water,
tests in tanks, so we are making good
improvements on the design, but of course there are still improvements to be
made”.
“As a product developer and operator,

we are technology agnostic, so we
are not financially involved or focused
upon one particular technology. Our
main goal is competition amongst the
supply-chain in order to bring costs
down for everyone. So, to this extent,
we have been looking at several designs
and engaging with several technology
developers.
In recent months, we have established a cooperation with German engineering firm

Aeroydn, which has brought a new concept to the market and are currently tested
a one-tenth scale prototype on a lake near Bremerhaven. The concept called
Nezzy 2 looks drastically new because it has two generators on one structure, and
brings a lot of innovations in that its self-aligning, positions itself optimally in the
wind, and comes with a new system of cable hang of
But on the other hand, it can use existing turbine technology. For us
commercialization is about building trust, in the end you want someone to invest in
it and trust that it will go well.”
“We need some standards to

understand what good looks like.
We need the detailed engineering
calculations to achieve good. But
we need good communication and
collaboration to make sure that
everyone is pulling in the same
direction.”
44
The challenge of data gatekeeping

“I think what we all know and appreciate
is that the controller data is perhaps
the most protected IP. I do understand
the need for confidentially on that topic.
This is one of the major challenges, still
the different concepts are very different,
this is not something that can be done
open source.”
“We respect that the IP of the controller

data is something which is well
protected. Today, I am more optimistic
that the industry as a whole is learning
on how to exchange the essential data
in order for floater designers like us to
be able to make the calculations. There
is ongoing progress on sharing the
relevant data for different processes and
the fact that we have some floating turbines in the water already shows that the
exchange of relevant data has occurred to make that happen.
What I want to see more sharing on is the O&M strategies, because what we
should be accounting for is how the turbine is maintained, and factoring that into
the design could bring the OPEX down quite significantly.”
45
Lifetime maintenance pinch points

“This is a hot topic and is discussed a
lot. One of the go to areas people look at
is oil and gas or telecoms because they
are more evolved markets with clear O&M
strategies. For example, you have vessels
on stand-by for maintenance and repair,
and those are well contracted and well
understood.
The problem inherent with those, is actually, telecoms for example, has standard
cable, standard joints, branching units, everything is similar, and the equipment
needed to repair and maintain is the same if you go to southeast Asia or in
Norway.
The understanding that repair, maintenance and through life support of wind
assets has been quite an interesting process in fixed-bottom and we are now
starting to see repair really coming into the overall contracting structure, really
featuring on the balance sheet from day 1”.
46
• Natural Power’s fixed vs. floating consenting impact and risk analysis signals
that floating wind projects will have a reduced footprint on the seabed
compared to fixed-bottom, however that will be spread over a greater marine
radius.
• The reduced footprint will lead to a subsequent reduction in habitat loss
• There will be a reduced need for scour protection, dependent upon anchor
design selected that could eliminate scour protection need entirely. We
have seen in England and Wales, particularly, that the introduction of scour
protection is a barrier to consent.
• There will be change to the underwater noise profile during the construction
period. Looking at the design envelope approach, small size pin piles and lower
hammer energy compared to fixed projects lowers the noise impact.
• From a consent perspective, catenary moorings are the major pint of difference
between fixed and floating farms. The key differences come through the
mooring radius and the infrastructure used.
• The greater mooring diameters and spatial impact associated with floating
turbines result in a greater risk of interaction with other subsea users and
activities, most obviously fishing activity and engagement between fishing
infrastructure and floating turbines is an area of consideration and a factor at
play across the lifespan of the project.
47
• There is a level of uncertainty around the perceived risk of birds and marine
mammals facing entanglement risk from floating infrastructure. Natural Power’s
analysis suggests that the risk relates more to secondary entanglement,
whereby fishing equipment become entangled with mooring and then species
subsequently get entangled in that.
• Natural Power envisage that the overall reduced construction period for floating
wind will positively impact consenting via reducing impact duration on marine
mammals, allowing for concurrent construction activities, and locational
restriction periods on commercial fisheries around construction activities will be
shortened.
48
Section 3: Fixed vs. Floating LCOE Comparison
“We are expecting floating to become

an option of foundation in the same way
you have an option of jacket, monopile,
gravity-based foundations. I think the
question is when you think floating will be
comparable with fixed bottom and what are
the issues to overcome to get there”.
“I think probably sooner than when people

might expect. If you look at the question of
where can you build fixed-bottom, well you
can build it more or less near shore except
for the North Sea and Baltic Sea which are
fairly unique in that essentially they are big
lakes which enable fixed bottom farther
offshore because of 10-50m depths.
The wind speeds in for example the Baltic

are c.8m/second. When you go off the coast of Ireland and Scotland you are into
c.11m/second and 65% capacity factor. And you’re probably going to be talking
about a standard 20MW size turbine with carbon fiber blades. That’s going to drive
the costs of floating right down.”.
“It’s not all about the cost, it’s also

about the opportunity. Abd you can go
to the windier sites with floating, you
can increase the revenue, and that all
helps with the bottom line. I think it’s
worth emphasizing just the scale of these
turbines. We are at 200m tip height
already. The next consents coming through
are for 250m, and we are already talking
about 300m tip heights for the 20MW turbines. That’s the equivalent of an Eiffel
Tower or Shard, these are huge structures and they’re likely to go further offshore
into the windiest sites and that’s going to be part of the huge advantages of floating,
why you can get to those highest capacity factors, and why you can get the LCOE
down as good as or better as fixed. Even if we couldn’t achieve these cost levels,
we are still going to need floating to hit these targets for new renewable generation
across Europe i.e. 700-900GW of new capacity. We will not achieve those targets if
we don’t exploit floating”.
49
Section 4: Financing Floating

Floating and its impact on the offshore investment landscape
“We have never seen a finance gap in

offshore wind, with investor appetite
growing with sector growth. On
floating wind, a couple of years ago
the questions focused around the
technical viability and capabilities of the
technology. Those questions have since
been answered through a series of
demonstrator projects and now the questions focus on the cost of the technology,
supply-chain and finance.
On the finance side, the size of the development of the sector in floating is that
10GW will be installed by 2030 and 70gw by 2040. The sector will need project
finance in place, international investors to be ready for that level of deployment”.
Mitigating the investment risk of floating

“It is really the technical side which
is presenting the increased risk on
floating to the banks. We don’t just
have one type of floating platform,
there are many different types of
floating out there so it’s not just the
case of getting comfortable with one
type of platform, which presents a
challenge.
They don’t have much operational track-record, some more than others, but some
are just going into the water for the first time and also seeking financing which is by
definition quite challenging.
The other key point is around the design envelope – we’ve been used to seeing
certain guarantees and warranties given by a turbine OEM for example on a power
curve for a fixed-bottom foundation, but none of these turbines have been designed
for floating turbines, they are just being bought to be put on floating platforms. So
the question is to what extent can that power curve be guaranteed, obviously the
more the platform moves the poorer the production, so who dictates the design
envelope is the question we would ask and how different are the guarantees going
to be compared to what we have seen on fixed?”
50
“There is a lot of bankability

considerations for floating wind which
would go across any offshore project.
Everyone recognizes the synergies
either with offshore fixed wind or
offshore oil and gas, one or the
other, so it is not entirely unchartered
territory for banks but clearly the
technology is new, it’s relatively untested, or where it has been tested that has not
necessarily been at scale. The obvious risk is technology and design, it’s about
really about understanding the behavior of a floating wind platform, combing
a floating platform and wind turbine is not that well know, we really need to
understand how that behaves over an extend period, fatigue in the long term etc.
Certification is not the magic bullet, but banks will likely want certification for the
whole system to contain the design risk and control over costs”.
The O&M factor in financing floating

“One advantage of floating tied to
this is that O&M is supposed to cost
less with floating, but distances tend
to be further away, so we do have to
consider whether the platform needs
to be towed back, how experience
have the supply chain built up in
doing that, and secondly, it might be
simply to detach the turbine and float
back into shore but how many days
of downtime does that entail compared to quick access at site to the problem in
fixed-bottom projects”.
51
“It is one of the key arguments for

floating wind, which I believe in
strongly, but it has not yet been
demonstrated how much it costs a
project to address major maintenance
issues and so effectively towing back
a turbine to shore and putting back
offshore, how long does that take, do
we have the vessels ready, do we have the shipyards ready, how does it translate
into loss of earnings and loss of revenues, how does that impact cashflows and
the overall business plan?
I think working very closely with an independent technical advisor to understand

all of that can really help in putting together a financing structure which addresses
those risks because I think those risks can be mitigated, but without the benefit of
track record and publicly shared information on earlier projects it is challenging”.
Contractual outlook
“We have already seen a full wrap
EPC contract on the Kincardine
floating project. We don’t tend to see
full-wrap EPC for fixed-bottom, it’s
always multi-contracting apart from
when there is a completion guarantee
offered by some parties in the market
as a de-risking method.
The first one (Kincardine) was done

on a full EPC wrap, but then that wasn’t done for limited recourse.
I do think we can get to limited recourse, to that multi contracting position. What
we need is flow, that really helps banks, we rely so much on technical advice with
offshore wind and we will rely even more on it for the floating wind sector”.
Contingency requirements from the first commercial floating project

“There are a great number of unknows
at present with floating, which
hopefully over time will fade away,
but for now there is going to be an
expectation that contingencies will
be higher than what we see in fixed-
bottom relative to the size of course.
In the range of 13-15% number, but I
have to say that will be on a project-
by-project basis really”.
52
Investment confidence by market

“The first one is probably going to be
France, with the four demo projects
awarded progressing albeit with some
delays.
The three European projects so far

– Hywind, W ind Float Atlantic and
Kincardine – haven’t really had a non-
recourse financing structure as we
know it.
So, I think France will be the first jurisdiction where we see that.
But hot on the heels, I do see the UK as offering quite a big potential market,
we see a lot of floating developers bidding in Scot W ind, and Round 4 had the
consultation on whether floating should be awarded its own pot.
In Norway, we have the Tampen project coming soon, and Portugal with the W ind
Float Atlantic maybe it will refinance at some point soon, and there’s some activity
lining up for the Canary Islands”.
Financing Deep Dive: The European Investment Bank

• As a public bank, EIB have
the role to support innovative
technologies and floating has
the possibility to be a game-
changer in the renewable
energy sector.
• The European Fund for

Strategic Investments is
allowing EIB to scale-up its
funding for riskier projects. The
initiative ends at the close of
2020, and EIB have reached
their objectives there, but
will replaced next year with
INVESTEU.
53
• Another financial instrument

which is targeting innovative
technologies is Innnovfin EDP.
This was what EIB used to
finance the W ind Float Portugal
project. This has been a
important instrument, where
EIB have an even higher risk
coverage from the institution
which we couldn’t do with its
normal products.
• On W indFloat Portugal, EIB

supported the project through the NER300 grant and eventually with a loan.
The project is now fully operational, marking a significant milestone for EIB and
the sector as a whole.
• EIB are looking at the French pilot projects, depending on the project we will
support them with either EIB financing (EFSI) or under the InnoVfin EDP.
54
Section 5: Market Readiness: Supply-Chain &

Infrastructure
Aligning resources & streamlining activities
“The complexity that we see at Cierco
operating with product developments
in the UK and US from a technology
agnostic platform and approach comes
when you start breaking it down and
seeing those building blocks and what is
important for us – for example, when we
looked at fixed-bottom we had monopile
and jacket, and they were open access
designs, so every project we built we had
evolution and we built upon that evolution. So across four separate projects what
you could achieve with that the same with four different floating designs which are
now company dependent and with IP’s and investors, so if you want to have the
same competitiveness and same level of supply-chain evolution you need to have
16 projects to do so.
We have technologies at different levels of commercial readiness, and those that

are at readiness should be able to continue, but if we don’t built up a supply-
chain you will have two or three companies who are very likely to be tied up with
commercial relationships. So, we must be very careful on what kind of market we
are building. We need to drive for every level of these developments for floating
wind to become a market and flourish and reach the LCOE levels we need”.
The role of the supply-chain in commercialization floating concepts

“There’s a real temptation in the
commercialization process to
compartmentalize knowledge and make sure
that specific aspects of the design or the
commercial implementation fall to certain
companies or certain levels within the
supply-chain.
That within itself can be a limiting factor.

W ith innovative companies in the supply-
chain, the more of the puzzle you let them understand, the better your returns will
be.
Understanding who you are contracting with is absolute key, and then
understanding their constraints. One of the things we often do at Osbit is when
we get a design brief, the most fruitful conversations we have are when we say,
you have asked us for this but can you tell us what the driver is behind that. So,
understanding more about where there are boundaries to be pushed”. 55
Mass production risk and management

“in large commercial farms the ability
to be able to deliver large numbers
of floaters and to deploy them in the
water is going to be a new challenge
compared to the numbers currently
involved in demonstrators. There will
be bottlenecks to use shipyards that
are suitable for floating manufacturing,
we need to establish which kind of
shipyards and what are the specifications. How the supply-chain should be built to
be able to supply all the steel, all the bricks of our modular floaters, where these
bricks should be built. At the beginning we think we will use existing yards, but as
soon as we step into sufficient commercial numbers, we think the market is going
to evolve towards dedicated shipyards for floating wind”.
“As an industry we need to look at the

quayside challenges. To build up the
supply chain and serial production you
would usually need a big, stable project
pipeline to get the orders in. I do think
that to make that jump in floating we
need to have courage”.
Advice to supply-chain to scale-up

“This is all about risk-sharing, and if you
want to be in the forefront of floating
wind you need to be preparing your
supply-chain. If you think about risk
being shared between the developer,
supply-chain and the government, the
government needs to do their part
with making sites available and the
regulatory framework fit for purpose.
The developer needs to take the risks associated with diving in and getting
projects going. And the supply-chain needs to be a little more proactive then they
are required to be in fixed-bottom projects, they need to make fit-for-purpose their
yards, fabrication methods and set-ups to make these different sub-structures.
Adjustments to the supply chain will be needed now to make the big volumes
available”.
56
Industrializing the floating industry

• Naval Energies, part of the Naval Group, position floating wind as an exciting
market but one where development is contingent upon the foundations
becoming industrialized objects, rather than project specific technologies.
Naval Energies are actively working on the development of projects in the US,
UK, France, South Korea and Japan.
• Their concept is a coupled floating foundation and mooring system, with

modular, adaptable fit for different turbine integration, simplified installation,
and operations and maintenance. The concept has recently been upgraded to
house the state-of-the-art 10MW turbines.
• Naval Energies are a key industrial partner of the Groix Belle-Ile project, which
is being developed by EOLFI/ Shell in France, expected to complete in 2022.
Naval Energies are responsible for the free-floating foundation, anchoring and
installation.
57
• Manufacturing needs to be built in series and at a rate of production required.

Floating farms will host between 50-100 floaters. Long-term visibility from the
market and end-users is required to justify the investments needed into these
serial systems.
58
Section 6 - Market Readiness: Connection & Grid

Infrastructure
Planning for floating
“900,000 MW of capacity are going to
be built around the seas of Europe, and
900,000MW of solar must build around
the Mediterranean for us to hit complete
decarbonization. So, talking about the
cost of any one technology we need
to remember that the generator is only
ever going to be one component of the
technology needed to deliver energy to the customer. The other two elements are
the grid and storage, with the size of the grid influencing the amount of storage
you need to put in.
I am looking at the current generation of HDVC platforms and measuring 2,000

plus of steel at high voltages, and we are looking at massive costs. For example,
in some fixed-bottom projects being developed, 40% of costs are associated with
connection to shore. You must plan for something which is more than when are we
going to get the LCOE of floating comparable to that of fixed”.
Distance from shore and transmission costs: an unavoidable penalty

cost for floating?
“The answer is in the last UK CfD round
where the winner was Dogger Bank
with a 200km transmission. In the US
we saw projects from New England
bidding for New York, 600km away.
There is also technological development
in transmission which is lowering those
associated costs”.
“All transmission in every country is a

mesh grid, and we are going to need
a mesh offshore grid to connect up
profoundly with the existing onshore grids.
So, we are going to have to connect up
the North Sea with the North Atlantic and
with the Irish Sea and with the Baltic Sea,
and we are probably going to have to go across Denmark to get there. So, you are
talking about a strategic issue here which is going to be very expensive. The thing
is 50km or 100km of the Irish Coast is neither here nor there, we are going to have
to spend probably trillions to be able to completely replace a fossil-fuel based
energy system.”
59
“What we see is if you look at Scotland

there are serious grid connection issues,
and how you resolve those is a bit like a
chicken and egg scenario. Which projects
will come through, what kind of grid
systems will that result in, and how long
will it take to build those?
In the US, when you look at the northern

Californian coast and consumption centers, there are serious grid issues and there
are no plans to reconcile that.
All of these grid system plans are for the end of this decade or beyond, but when
you look at the actual projects it’s going to be those low hanging fruit sites where
fixed-bottom ends and we have sites available”.
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Section 7: Technical Concepts
Saitec Offshores’ route to market

• SATH Technology is an
innovative precast concrete
floating concept suitable for
shallow and deep waters
of 35m+. It is a disruptive
technology, with twin hulls
linked to a submerged plate.
• SATH’s development
trajectory begun in 2014
and has culminated in two
demonstration projects –
BlueSATH and DemoSATH – which have been operating since 2019.
• BlueSATH seeks to advance the technology readiness and de-risk the full-scale
demonstrator which forms the next stage of development.
• Scaling down challenges: The demonstrator is a 1/6TH 10MW scale platform.
DemoSATH
• The project signals Spain’s
first multi MW prototype.
The project reached a
milestone this year with the
FiD thanks in part to the
collaboration agreement
with RWE, which is
actively looking for greater
deployment of the unit.
• The project starts

construction in November
2020, and deployment of the unit will take place late-2021/early 2022.
61
Principle Power’s route to market

“Back in 2014 when I joined, we were a
company of 10, now we have almost 100
people at the company, and back then we
were testing a prototype for a futuristic market.
Today that market is building real projects,
operating real projects, it’s really a commercial
market.
Now we are preparing for large commercial

projects. We have adjusted our business model quite a bit, we have learnt where
we can best serve the market and customers, and now today we are presenting
the full life cycle of services from design through to decommissioning.
We are happy that we are in a position today where we can call floating offshore
wind a global reality.
If we look back over the last decade it is really about what went wrong, what we
learnt from things that can be done better, and that’s what places us where we are
today. For example, learning how to transform a scaled model into a 2MW machine
operating in the sea, we learnt a lot through the operations of that process,
communication issues, design improvements, access issues. Through our current
operational projects, we have learnt how hard it is to get bank financing, to get the
turbine OEM’s to provide warranties, how to get the equity sponsors comfortable
with that.
And now in the next phase of projects, we are in a new learning journey where we
bring in all those things that we learnt the hard way into knowing how to deploy 50
units at a time in large-scale projects which have different types of challenges, we
have to reshape our problem solving.
We have been fortunate to work with a variety of partners. We have worked

with EDF, OW, ACS Cobra, Total. Through the process of working with different
customers we have really been able to learn that the process is quite different from
customer to customer, the demands and needs.
We have also worked under different contractual frameworks such as under an

EPC provider, directly under the energy company, and we have really shaped our
business model in that process.
We have also been present throughout the lifecycle. We have taken roles in early
development and creating projects like we have done in the US, Portugal and
62
South Korea. We have been involved in hardcore engineering and construction

support. And throughout operations at our projects. So we have learnt where
we play better, and have adjusted our business model to be present across the
lifecycle and also nimble, so that the way we are present in California is different
to how we are present in South Korea, and that’s different to how we are present
in Japan.
We remain focused on technology development and our goal is to move the

technology forward from an industrialization viewpoint.
We also have technology tracks that we are working on further on, such as
development of digital twins, the first floating wind digital twin offering.
Delivery, delivery, delivery is how we stay competitive in this space. It’s all about
delivering what we have. We are currently in a very fortunate position where we are
currently developing over 100MW of capacity, and we have just delivered a 25MW
project in Portugal, we are delivering a 50MW project in Scotland, and now one in
France.
It’s all about delivery. Customers not only need to see that we are a technology
that works, that we can deliver on their needs and to meet their timelines.
In the past it was always about technology, the best technology available. Whilst
that is going to remain true, the execution is key, and customers want projects
delivered on time with the right returns to them.
We need to continue to lock in the next phase of projects, we have locked in a

very solid pipeline of projects, over 4GW of capacity we are working on directly
with developers on an exclusive basis, and that allows us to work closely with
them on project execution plans at a much earlier point.
If you do those two things in parallel, execution of the current projects and lock-in
a pipeline you are doing the right things.
You want competition, you want new technology to develop and you want the
market to advance.
Three key factors to reach full scale deployment:
1) You need to see large scale projects being locked-in so that people can be
actively investing in those, we have seen this happening in France with the
tenders coming up and in Scot W ind, we are seeing steps, but more needs
to be done on the regulatory front to lock-in the pipeline for communities to
actively invest in those large scale projects;
2) Industrialization is the big challenge for us, every customer asks how you
can go from 5 units to 50 units in a 1-2-year timeframe of deployment. How
63
do I build 50 units and how do I engineer for that? It’s almost a reverse of
the problem, like a back to front design where you start from the delivery,
from the execution, which is usually owned by the developer, so that’s a big
challenge for us as a technology provider but it needs to be solved hand in
hand with the project owners and developers.
3) As you get more visibility on regulatory and locking in project sites, that will
be key in developing the supply-chain, working with ports and shipyards to
work with the development community and us on how to industrialize units.
This is going to look slightly different in different regions. In some places,
infrastructure investments will be required, with the end goal of creation of
local content, local jobs and local economic acceleration”.
64
Section 8: Developer plans for floating

Key challenges for developers
“For us it is design. Getting the design
fully satisfied and compliant with all the
group requirements. The contracting also
in a field of energy where the standard
approach is not already there, we are
creating it, so allocating the risk. The
permitting process, especially in France,
which is a huge process.
Moving from 6-10MW has raised opportunities, we might be the first company to
sit a 10MW turbine on a floater”.
“A number of our challenges are policy

challenges. What we are doing is
developing a 96MW project which clearly
needs specific government support, the
support on CfD is critical, we know that
we are targeting AR5 in 2023 and that
concentrates the mind to get all the tasks
and milestones hit on time to meet that.
Local supply-chain is the second big challenge. We don’t have the oil and gas
expertise there and the infrastructure in place. So, we are working with the local
supply-chain to maximize the benefit to the local economies. Our 96MW will have
more impact on the local economies then on grid contribution. The supply-chain
needs to have confidence in the project and government system to invest in the
necessary resources and tool up.
“The W indFloat project has been operating

since late 2019. Recently we handed
over from construction to O&M. The main
construction challenge was manufacturing
delays to two of the three floaters,
meaning we had to install through the
autumn and winter season instead of late-
summer of 2019. W ith the contractors
we installed in winter which is a demonstration that floating can complete even in
challenging conditions”.
65
“Floating has the potential to be a

Alessandro Boschi,
gamechanger and add another option
Head of Renewable Division,
European Investment Bank to the toolkit of renewable energies.
We feel that we are bit in the same role
we were with fixed-bottom 10-15 years
ago, when the industry was at the start
and internally people were thinking
why we might be supporting this given
the really high costs, the LCOEs were above E200MW/h for fixed bottom, and
those levels were going up at some projects initially, and it took some time for
confidence on the banking side.
We are in a similar situation now with floating, although floating has the vantage
point of harnessing learning from fixed-bottom”.
Is the scale of development big enough?

“I think from a UK view, we have Scot W ind
coming through with potentially 5GW of
floating, but that is really for the second
half of this decade. For the Celtic Sea we
need to look beyond the leasing in Round
4, we got our project through the Test and
Demonstration scheme but the maximum
capacity on that is 100MW, and if you stay
at 100MW you are not going to get the cost down. So, I think we are all looking
forward to seeing how we can open up the Celtic Sea. This all takes time which is
why we believe the stepping stone approach to building out the industry – starting
at 30MW, then to 100MW, then to 300MW and upwards – is the best way and
that’s how we think the industry needs to develop.
The 2020s is about getting costs down and getting the supply-chain capable. The
2030s is about larger rollout and competition.”
“In France we have the four pilot projects,

but next year we will start tendering
commercial projects expected to be
250MW. Then we are expecting another
250MW tender in the Mediterranean
Sea. So, France is introducing a path
for the technology to build and reach to
commercialization. The next step is that
jump to those 500-750MW projects. Policy
is a must to get floating to become a commercial reality.”
66
“The potential is huge in Europe. We

need to understand if we want to further
the development of the technology we do
need to work together with the different
administrations. In the South of Europe
specifically, it is still behind in terms of
wind farm capacity deployed, there is a
lot of work to be done across Iberia. We
are naturally areas where fixed-bottom is difficult to accommodate and so we need
to get the attention of these markets to show that floating wind is an option and
the frameworks need to be there to enable that, i.e. we cannot compete at auction
with solar PV or onshore wind”.
Developer Deep Dive: Equinor

Why floating wind?
“Basically, Equinor had a strategy around
5-years ago where we established a
new energy solution as a business area
within the company. That was a key step
within the energy transition strategy and
one of the key pillars in that transition is
offshore wind. And within offshore wind
we are doing fixed and floating. The first
offshore wind farm Equinor built was a floating farm, the Hywind Demo, off the
coast of Norway, so the first turbine installed by us was a floating one. And that
links back to our competencies and capacity within oil and gas – the ability to
operate offshore in complex marine environments and build complex projects.
We do see floating as having a competitive edge for us, both because we have the
capacity to do this and because we are the global leaders in floating”.
Overview of project portfolio

“In 2009, we installed the Hywind Demo, a 2.3MW turbine which has since proven
the Hywind concept., coming online in 2017.
We have been operating 30MW of floating capacity across 6 turbines at Hywind

Scotland for 3-years. The turbines have been working perfectly at a high capacity
factor and proving that there is no technical disadvantage to floating wind versus
fixed-bottom.
67
We recognize scale and volumes to drive the costs down, and on that note, we
announced that in 2022 we will have Hywind Tampen project in the Norwegian
North Sea onstream. It is an 88MW project supplying our oil platforms with power
and contributing to our decarbonization targets.
This is a very important step for us both in terms of next steps of scales for
floating and onboarding the 40% cost reductions we have realized at Hywind
Scotland.
We do also see now that things are changing in the market, markets are opening
up in Europe, Asia and the US, with floating increasingly being the only offshore
wind option for markets where fixed-bottom is not suitable for deployment.
You have projects in Korea, Japan, US west coast. Closer to home we have the
Scot W ind process coming up and the French auction. So, before 2030 I think we
will see GW’s of floating wind in Europe, Asia and the US.
Hywind Scotland was the big test to see if this works in a park configuration not
just as a single turbine demo. So, they were exciting times and we learnt from that
that there were no installation, hook-up or operations setbacks.
Of course, you need to make sure that you have an O&M system in place, and
the further offshore you are the more robust that O&M plan needs to be. That’s
something we are working very actively on, here you can talk about lean cost-
efficient O&M, digitization, logistical challenges, wave heights etc. All these things
we are working on, but none of them are really holding back floating wind in any
way.
The biggest challenge is cost and that comes with volume, the pipeline and the
supply-chain competing for projects, as we have seen with fixed-bottom”.
“Our strategy is to remain a leader in floating offshore wind and build out our
portfolio. We do see that a lot of new players are coming in, a lot of oil and gas
majors, and that is good, we see that as an enabler for the industry to get traction
and get the cost curve down faster than we might have thought two years ago. We
will stay ahead of that curve.
It is exciting what is happening in Korea, they are ambitious on both their climate
targets and opening up areas and putting in place the framework in place for
developers and supply-chain to do it”.
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Section 9: Technology Innovations: Mooring

Systems Case Study
• Mooring components and installation of moorings are assumed to account each

for between 5-10% of CAPEX, and therefore there is huge potential to optimize
both the components and installations.
• Oil and gas learnings: “Need to keep the designs simple, have standardized
components and make sure they are robust. We also believe there needs to be
a coupled approach between design and installation”.
“We need to take a different approach to the oil and gas industry where there
was almost always one structure installed. We need to think about combining the
need for standardization and industrialization with the likelihood for local content
requirements. We also need to consider how many lines do we want per floater,
how can we reduce line loads, and how can we cut down the installation times”
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Section 10: Floating Offshore Wind Outlook:

Accelerating Commercialisation
”Floating wind turbines have been in the water and operating for over 11 years. We
have moved from a concept to a technology. Ideol, Equinor, and Principle Power
have clocked up significant hours in the water, building up a body of experience
and insight for future projects. However, breaking into utility-scale deployments is
a challenge.
This is not about providing the technology anymore, but rather doing it at scale,
affordably and safely. The key question is how big is the gap between where we
are now and the future? It is easy to dismiss this as upscaling, but the technology
challenges are significant.
For example, how do you design, build, install and maintain a highly resilient
mooring system for a large-scale field cost-effectively. There are certainly lessons
from oil and gas to be harnessed. Anchors are always a challenge for a floating
production storage and offloading deployment unit which can have as many as 16
mooring lines. Upscale this to a field which might have 25 units and you are talking
about hundreds of mooring lines even with simplified systems.
So how do you guarantee the design integrity over 25 years without constant
maintenance and inspection regimes?” - Andrew McKeran, Commercial
Director - Marine & Offshore, Lloyd’s Register
“There is a lot of learnings to take from oil & gas, but also from other industries
in the maritime sector. Oil and gas brings decades of expertise, like offshore wind
it started out with fixed platforms just off the coast, and now we have floating
platforms in some of the harshest of marine environments. And they all work, they
deliver what the clients asked for in the first place.
The key things are understanding what is new and what isn’t new, what we can
take and how it can be applied, the oil and gas industry is very driven by long
service life because that is fundamental to making your project economical, very
experienced in putting specialist equipment designed for onshore use into harsh
offshore environments, the oil and agas industry is very good at understanding and
defining risk.
Getting all the right things in place at the beginning is key” - Simon Potter,
Marine Discipline Manager, KBR
70
Building locally AND remaining competitive

“Ideol has a target of manufacturing 1 floating unit per fortnight. The energy market
has local content requirements because it is a strategic mechanism for any market
for energy price security. So, there will also be local content requirements. We
see in fixed wind over the past few weeks there has been some noise around this
regarding how we can build things locally and whether utilities should choose to
import structures and components abroad.
We need to use industries and techniques and strategies available worldwide.

Building structures in most countries is done predominantly with concrete and that
is why we went for concrete in our initial designs. It does have the advantage of
having a much lower cost to strength ratio and in the floating sector we benefit from
the platform not needing to carry anything other than the turbine unlike in oil and
gas” - Thomas Choisnet, Chief Technology Officer, Ideol
Certification
“I think that’s a key point to understand – how are we going to certify floating
units, and it could be different certifications for different parts. We need to get to
a common level of understanding on the turbine certification. How we get there is
going to need more discussion” - Simon Potter, Marine Discipline Manager, KBR
“That’s a question we asked ourselves back in 2010. What we need is to support

a turbine and the floating structure is nothing else then the bedplate of the turbine
in terms of function. Whatever the sea state actually the hold loads are pretty
similar, so yes it would be possible for a given turbine to define a generic design for
worldwide application. The other thing is that there are no real type certifications for
these types of turbines. The DNVGL are working on something at the moment.
As we have seen in oil and gas, you have something certified and then you get
relocation certifications and then you get quick approval and turnaround times” -
Thomas Choisnet, Chief Technology Officer, Ideol
71
Industry collaboration requirements for LCOE targets

“The industry goal to achieve parity with fixed-bottom is a fair target although
we also have to realize that floating wind will be installed in locations that fixed-
bottom cannot go, i.e. harsher environments, deep seas, heavy waves, more
difficult to access. The design philosophy we have chosen is based upon our long
tradition of mooring systems, whereby the Tension Leg Platform design allows for
a very stable operation, basically a fixed foundation which allows for very little
moment of the nacelle and very high fidelity of the power curve. So, having said
that, that is where the client is going to be focusing – they want to build a large-
scale project with high yield and high energy production, that is where the whole
equation starts.
CAPEX is the prime cost in the EPCI phase, that is where SBM has focused
on a high degree of modularity both within the design and the industrialization
approach. We are looking at looking at global partnerships for supply and
sourcing, and local partnerships for the logistics and installation to drive costs
down. W ith that you achieve a large series of key components which can be used
in various scales of TLP which can be scaled with the technology used in different
sized turbines. So, the manufacturing of variation of the TLP will be very limited to
changes in the wind turbine size.
Turbine sizes are developing so quickly because the push for electricity prices
has really geared up the scaling effect. That will no doubt continue, now we are
looking at 18,20MW turbine going forward.
Our approach is that it doesn’t matter what the size of the turbine is, our design
will be able to scale to that without changing the design in principle, allowing for a
stable supply chain and ongoing relationships with suppliers.
Reducing dependence on turbine size and dependence on location is where we are

focusing on. The modularity of the approach, international flexible approach is key
to reaching the economies of scale necessary” - Maurits Ornstein - Business
Development Manager, SBM
72
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Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020: Conference

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Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020: Conference

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Offshore & Floating

Wind Europe 2020

Similarly, the impressive improvements in floating wind technology offer the

Thank you to our 2020 Sponsors

Offshore & Floating Wind Europe 2020

Fixed-Bottom Offshore Wind Summary............................................................... 13

Floating Wind Summary ...................................................................................... 38

Section 1: Global & Regional Outlooks

• Most projects have continued construction as they would have pre-pandemic.

• Under a single-wave pandemic scenario, BNEF forecast 193GW of globally

• BNEF’s analysis of market-level cumulative installed capacity by 2030 indicates

• The UK is expected to be the second largest offshore wind market globally

• Project development timelines constructed by BNEF show that the UK’s

• In France, it is anticipated that many of the permitting issues that have

Market Deep Dive: The Baltic Sea

On 30 September, the eight Baltic Sea countries and the EU

An early market mover’s perspective

Equinor’s approach to enter early was facilitated

The reason for us looking at Poland because the

The Polish authorities have been really

When we entered Poland, everyone asked about

Expanding the Baltic Sea portfolio

The Baltic Sea is one of our favorite places to be

Regarding Poland we are very excited to be

The Lithuanian Story

The Irish Opportunity

“Ireland has a target of 5GW by 2030. Also,

Market Deep Dive: Taiwan – Offshore Wind Consultants Research

• Taiwan’s optimum wind resources are in

• A n additional strong wind resource area

• The shallower water depths available

- Grid connection points and capacities are expected to be disclosed by close-2020

• The combination of technological advancements such as bigger turbines and auctions

• Under a like-for-like scenario whereby projects continue to be developed under the

Section 2: Cost Trends & Outlooks

Section 1: Reflections on 2020: COVID-19 and

Beyond that, I think broadly speaking

“2020 has been a very exciting year for

In March the acquisition of Eneco by a consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and

In terms of projects under construction, that started challenging bids because

“2020 started on a high for EDF

But offshore wind continues to be a very collaborative industry across

Offshore continues to innovative, to collaborate and to deliver which is really

“2020 has been an incredible year for

“Offshore wind is actually in a very

If we look back at COVID-19 pandemic, what we can learn from it is the

“I think that the pandemic has taught us

I think that is quite relevant when you

Section 2: The outlook for 2021

“In Europe, we have been in confidential

We are also starting to think about

“In 2021, construction at the HKN project

“2021 for EDF Renewables will focus on

Otherwise the focus will be on continued

“2021 is going to be a very busy

“There’s so much to be excited about.

Section 3: Growth projections and sector

“If you look at the energy planning of

We see more and more merchant

“The challenges are going to come in

“As a market leader we have 17GW in

“If we look at the kind of projects

“So I see the appetite for the asset

• Taiwan’s optimum wind resources are in

• A n additional strong wind resource area

- Grid connection points and capacities are expected to be disclosed by close-2020