Floating wind has long been hailed as a key tool in our fight against climate change, but outside of industry news and regional papers, it only sporadically appears in our newsfeed. This is hardly surprising as floating wind has been around for almost a decade and the collective excitement surrounding it has naturally quietened to make way for the buzz around carbon capture and a colony on Mars. However, in reality, the market has reached an incredibly exciting inflection point.

The past couple of years have witnessed the deployment of a range of pilots, with investment and acquisition activity from heavyweights such as Shell and Equinor. Small-scale commercial projects are in the pipeline for the next couple of years, and those watching the market are keen to see which technologies break out as market leaders. There is a clear divide between technology developments, those who innovate the floater (the platform on which the turbine sits) and those who innovate beyond the floater, such as the wind turbine or the blades. Currently, innovation beyond the floater is primarily sitting with smaller-scale technology companies, with larger companies acquiring a stake or the entirety of said companies.

There is a notable absence of activity from the wind turbine OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers); thus far, the likes of Siemens Gamesa and Vestas have supplied existing turbines to be erected on floater platforms, yet have had no part in innovating. The 2022 Carbon Trust Report highlights the importance of OEMs sharing more data and collaborating with innovators, but for the historically tight-lipped OEMs, this won’t be an easy change.

Alongside technological development, port infrastructure is essential to the deployment of floating wind. For the UK to achieve its target of 1GW of floating wind (as of April 2022 there is just 124MW of floating wind installed worldwide) an estimated €6.5bn investment is needed by 2030 in the UK to meet offshore wind targets (floating and fixed). This effectiveness of investment is linked to CfD (Contract for Differences) allocations, as developers will be unwilling to invest without a clear pipeline of work. In the most recent round, one floating offshore wind project (TwinHub) received allocation. The next allocation looks promising for floating wind, as the government proposed that the first emerging technology to be included in Allocation Round 5 should be Floating Offshore Wind, considering its deployment potential in the medium term.

Currently a nascent market, floating wind is facing a multitude of technical, infrastructure and structural issues: an inventive, flexible way of collaborating between industry players, government and innovators is required, but don’t be disheartened, the future is floating.