Offshore Wind Market – Europe Aims Building 100GW

• Analysis
• 28-December-2020

The United Kingdom and European Union as a whole have started developing their offshore wind industry, which may affect the whole Offshore Wind Power, Industry Market.

 Following this, the UK recently released a 10 – point plan to achieve its net-zero carbon target by 2050. The country had already announced a 40-gigawatt offshore wind target earlier. This collaboration will increased support to carbon-capture projects, a 5 GW clean hydrogen goal, and a 10-year advance ban of new fossil-fuelled cars whose year has now been changed to 2030.

Just after the UK's 10 – pointer was launched, European Commission (EU's executive branch) brought forward its offshore wind strategy. It included more cooperation in cross-border project development and planning. It has set up significant targets like 60 GW by 2030 (upgraded from 12 GW) and 300 GW by 2050.

These developments in Europe are being considered a revolution, including the EU's requirement for hybrid projects as part of its strategy. One super–hybrid has already been seen from Shell and the Utility Eneco in the Netherland. It combined renewable energy with energy storage or green hydrogen production.

 It has been estimated that the use of power to X – green hydrogen and energy storage systems will change the generation profile compared with a plain vanilla offshore wind farm.

The word "Hybrid" has also been used to describe projects twice as interconnectors between the two countries. The interconnector's path passes through an offshore wind farm, enabling power to be sold in two markets instead of one. It is better than only building a cable; moreover, it also saves doubling up on transmission investment.

A demo hybrid project of this sort has been made between Denmark and Germany, which is being tested for this concept of building interconnector. Latvia and Estonia have also agreed to collaborate on something similar.
Energy Islands proposed by Denmark take the concept to a very high level with multiple connections linking to about 10 GW of power generation.

These targets are not without hurdles. However, Acreage may not be one of them. After 2030, new opportunities may emerge in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas and new areas of the North Sea due to the expected maturity of floating offshore wind.

Experts have been skeptical about the supply chain of the market. However, it will not be a smart strategy to compare today's supply chain with tomorrow's demand. The supply in the offshore wind market has always been able to keep up with the demand. There have been many cases of oversupply as well. Even though there may be a presence of bottlenecks in the supply chain, it is not necessary that they will materialize.
 
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