very cheap electricity that we have around the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, near or along the Northeastern U.S. and in some parts of Asia. Since people live on land, and offshore wind is out of site, this bulk supply of cheap renewable resources is a fantastic opportunity and possibility.
FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND Ragnhild Katteland At least for our industry, the cabling industry, floating offshore wind will use a similar technology as we already use for other types of platforms. I guess that’s why Ørsted, and others such as oil companies, are jumping into floating offshore wind. To make this move forward, I do think that we need to put in place the same schemes as we did when we started the first offshore wind activities. This means a joint effort between governments funding the industries and developers to make this a cost-effective and reliable solution. We have already enabled the first commercial wind farm, in operation since 2017, Hywind Scotland. It’s working well and now we have several floating offshore wind farms being developed. John Hill We see offshore floating wind as a future technology. It obviously opens huge new areas of seabed to development of wind generation. But obviously the cost competitiveness of that is going to be critical. As a technology it may be five to 10 years out to make it as cost-competitive as current technologies. The next round of UK government allocations is the middle of next year. The government is currently consulting on how that round of auctions should be structured. Floating is one of the technologies they’re looking at and how they would support a development phase for that type of technology. It can’t compete today against current offshore wind technology and therefore it needs separate government support to make the projects viable or to develop and test the technologies. It looks like they are going for it, as far as we can tell at the moment, and it’s the same in Scotland which is promoting floating offshore wind as well. Ulrik Stridbaek I agree with John that floating will, everything else being equal, continue to be more costly than bottom-fixed. Maybe, at some point, it will be able to compete directly but floating is for that reason, mainly relevant now for those coasts and countries that have deep waters where they do not have shallow coastlines. While there is some capacity for bottom-fixed, if these locales really want to scale up, it will have to be floating.
CHALLENGES FOR EUROPE TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE NEUTRALITY Ragnhild Katteland There are several different things to consider. But there are three key areas that I see as important to achieve this. It’s supply security, operability and of course sustainability. For supply security, we need to have good reliability of the supplies and it will be even more important as electricity becomes the primary energy source. The grids and the distribution networks will need to be smarter and more resilient to cater to new loads like electric vehicles. And it’s also to increase the centralization of higher levels of intermittency. For the subsea grids and for the new interconnectors, it will be needed to promote energy trading. We need to build this to be climate neutral and to build on the subsea grids new interconnectors for wind, solar and so on. We have some cities that have come a very long way, smart cities, combining all of these. And then of course on the high-level grids, you are also connecting countries to ensure that we have the supply security in place in case something happens to your network.
US RENEWABLES OPPORTUNITY, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA, WITH ITS CARBON NEUTRAL ECONOMY BY 2045 Ulrik Stridbaek Ørsted is active in both onshore and offshore wind in the U.S. Onshore wind has been advancing at a very high speed over many years and it’s attracting a lot of investment. The same is true of solar PV. The main reason for attracting these investments is that it’s common sense, it’s good business and it’s competitive. States along the northeastern U.S. have fantastic conditions for offshore wind. They have been starting to develop regulatory schemes to support that over the last few years. We and others are also there with investments now taking place. There are, of course, a lot of political issues that must be discussed and dealt with. But investments are taking place and it’s a very, very promising market. American policymakers have seen this opportunity as a job creator. Ulrik Stridbaek The California policymakers are definitely attentive to the offshore opportunity; but, their coastline gets deep very quickly. It will have to be floating. It is fairly high on their list of priorities to meet their 2045 decarbonization target. Ragnhild Katteland They’re truly pushing floating there and have formed SEPTEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 114
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