Subsea sector talks floating offshore wind

Subsea companies can find out how to leverage the opportunities in the floating offshore wind through a three-part webinar series organised by Subsea UK and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE), beginning 9 March.

Subsea UK is encouraging underwater engineering companies to capitalise on the “massive” global potential in floating offshore wind following recent developments.

UK Government has set a target of one gigawatt (GW) of floating wind capacity by 2030, the EU is also aiming to have 100-150 GW by 2050 and new research from Wood Mackenzie states the floating wind market in Asia Pacific could offer investment opportunities worth up to $58 billion.

Hosted by Subsea UK in conjunction with ORE Catapult, the UK’s technology innovation and research centre for offshore renewable energy, the first online event on Tuesday, 9 March, will reveal the projected growth of the floating offshore wind (FOW) industry globally.

Experts from ORE Catapult’s team will explore FOW deployment targets, provide an overview of the £2-million FOW CoE’s objectives, work programme and supply chain development activities, including relevant opportunities for the subsea sector relating to dynamic cables and ancillary systems and mooring and anchoring systems.

Guest speaker Alexander Fløtre from Rystad will forecast demand for offshore wind cables driven by floating wind, helping potential suppliers assess the scale of opportunity in the FOW cable sector.

“The UK’s subsea sector is ideally placed to leverage its vast underwater sectoral experience to segue seamlessly into supporting floating offshore wind and play an integral part of its future. Floating offshore wind has the potential to be a massive industry on a global scale and there are very real opportunities for the subsea sector to grasp in this exciting, emerging market.

“This initial webinar provides an overview of the industry for our participants, concentrating on the predicted FOW deployment rates until 2050, the size of opportunity for the supply chain and how to engage with work on mooring and anchoring systems and dynamic cables.

“We’ll be supplementing this session with two subsequent webinars that highlight critical subsea components in floating offshore wind, with lots of practical advice on how delegates can get involved in this game-changing space.”

Ellen Jump, project engineer for ORE Catapult, who will be presenting as part of the webinar series, also said:

“The UK has world-renowned expertise in subsea engineering, including in areas directly relevant to floating offshore wind, such as mooring and anchoring systems and dynamic cable and ancillary systems.

It’s key that the FOW industry utilises and builds upon the existing knowledge and experience within the UK subsea sector.”