Standardisation and investment needed to unlock future of floating wind

The research, developed in partnership with Norwegian Offshore Wind and World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO), surveyed 184 floating offshore wind stakeholders on industry sentiment and attitudes across the value chain.

The survey revealed a lack of standardisation of floating technology (55 per cent), manufacturing capability and capacity (51 per cent) and port infrastructure (50 per cent) as the most cited major hurdles and risks to progress for floating offshore.

With this, Westwood said that calls are ringing out for governments to provide more specific policy and regulatory support for technology development, in addition to cost reduction and investment in port infrastructure to accelerate adoption.

It was also found that 42 per cent of European respondents were less optimistic about the floating offshore wind sector than they were two years ago, compared with 30 per cent for non-Europe.

Globally, 44 per cent of developers were found to be more optimistic about the sector than two years ago, whereas that decreased to just under a quarter of supply chain respondents, potentially pointing to a lag in projects coming to tender for their services.