The WindEurope Floating Wind Task Force set out a mission statement last June that was anchored in five key messages: that the technology was 'coming of age'; costs were coming down; the wider offshore wind industry and floating wind sector were 'united' in purpose; that floating wind expanded the ambition of offshore wind as a mainstream energy source; and that Europe must capitalise on its pace-setting role.

A year on, we have the 30MW Hywind Scotland array online, the 2MW Floatgen prototype about to start-up, and multi-unit demonstrator and commercial-scale projects under development across the globe.

What needs to be done to step up the momentum? What are your thoughts on the strategy of the sector deal “stretch targets” recommended recently by the Friends of Floating Offshore Wind advocacy group to the UK government of 1GW of projects by 2025 and 5GW by 2030?

First, I’d like to underline that the cost-reduction targets that the industry is currently setting for itself for early-commercial – that is, sub-€100 ($124) – as well as mature-commercial – or €65 and below – floating wind farms are totally achievable, given adequate visibility in terms of tendered and/or commissioned volumes by 2030 and beyond.

Secondly, picking up this subject of long-term visibility, it is important to underline that key industry assocations are fully supportive of these targets and, in fact, are leading the charge. WindEurope has been spearheading efforts which translated into an industry white paper for the European Commission in January this year; the French wind energy association, FEE, is hard at work with senior government representatives planning for the country's upcoming tenders; and in Britain, the Friends of Floating Offshore Wind has issued a UK-specific position paper suggesting several options of which a sector deal is one, with the "stretch targets" you mention.

Whatever the most suitable action plan might be for each country or region, the offshore wind industry across Europe – and the rest of the world as a matter of fact – has clearly understood that floating wind is the future and that it represents a tremendous socio-economic opportunity for all stakeholders involved.

Advocacy groups are committed to keep on educating policy makers, taking the history and the rather unforeseen cost-reductions of bottom-fixed offshore wind as examples of how well-thought out support mechanisms and industry incentives could lead to hundreds of thousands of high value-added job creations, and cheaper clean and safe energy for the end-user.

Given that floating and bottom-fixed wind share about 70% of their capex, I would even dare claim today that floating wind’s learning curve will definitely be shorter and that the amount and duration of any support mechanism will most likely be lower than what has been seen with bottom-fixed. Momentum is really building now.

The WindEurope Floating Wind Task Force will be meeting on the last day of the FOWT 2018 conference in Marseille later this month. What will be the key points of discussion? And how can this discussion be broadened to involve the global offshore wind industry – we know a first major floating wind farm is now on the cards off the US West Coast, and China and Asia more widely are now moving ahead with projects of similar and larger capacities – much as FOWT has done in its first three iterations?

WindEurope’s Floating Wind Task Force is the floating wind industry’s leading advocacy group and has thus the responsibility to address today’s and tomorrow’s key challenges to ensure a timely and optimised market-readiness.

We are concentrating our efforts on floating-specific issues hand-in-hand with WindEurope’s offshore working group, tackling a variety of offshore wind related matters. The key subjects being worked on today by the task force are linked to cost-reduction efforts and pathways, mooring solutions and offshore operations, floating substations, standards, and so on.

Given the European industry’s global leadership in terms of offshore wind – as confirmed by the way European firms have been welcomed and solicited in the US and Taiwan for example – one can easily imagine that the best practices, recommendations and other priorities identified and worked on by the floating task force will have either a universal undertone and/or be an inspiration for other markets.

The floating wind market has clearly been a global market from the get-go and all its leading representatives are already present globally; we can no longer remain Euro-centric with our actions and initiatives and need to intergrate the European expertise’s export potential in anything we do or intend to do – and that means the US, China, Asia in total.

Cost reduction of course remains a fundamental issue for floating wind. “Projects and more projects” are how Irene Rummelholf, head of Statoil’s New Energies division, expects the LCOE [levellised cost of energy] of floating wind to be driven down. For conventional offshore wind much of the cost reduction has come from scale-up of turbines and streamlining of the supply chain. In which additional areas should we expect to see the biggest cost-outs for floating wind?

The upscaling of offshore wind turbines to 12-15MW or more within the coming years will certainly be an important piece of the floating wind cost reduction puzzle, so is serial production, but the sector is also targeting offshore installation optimisation, developing bigger and bigger wind farms, extending products’ – and so wind farms’ – design lives.

Examining how to tackle and optimise O&M operations given the limited weather windows and the added cost of offshore operations, limiting the impact of financing costs, challenging conservative certification and class requirements, limiting the need for expensive portuary infrastructure upgrades, etc, can also be added to the cost reduction investigation efforts.

FOWT – which you’ve personally shepherded and driven from a largely Franco-centric gathering of 120 only three years ago into a truly international event that is expecting over 800 delegates this year – has distinguished itself as a forum for discussion as to how floating wind is industrialised/commercialised rather than the type of sales-pitch-led affair that is all-too-common in any industry.

How important to your mind has this format been in accelerating development of floating wind, in the context of the fact that only nine years ago it was a one-turbine sector and now it is heading – by most forecasts – toward over 12GW by the end of the next decade?

Credit also goes to the rest of the organisation team and the quality of the papers that are each year submitted. But a key reason for the success of this event resides in the fact that we’ve kept on focussing the programming on the most up-to-date and relevant current and future challenges this nascent industry is facing, with recognised experts in various fields 'sharing' their knowledge and experiences in the interest of all instead of 'selling' products and services in the interest of only a few.

Hywind floating array output beats bottom-fixed through winter

Another reason for this event’s tremendous success is the no 'pay-to-play' policy and the absence of speaking or chairing privileges for the sponsors – something we unfortunately too often witness during other sponsor-driven events.

Speaking about FOWT’s sponsors, there are 21 this year, all of which approached the organising committee independently – not one call has been made or e-mail sent to attract one of them. They all wanted to be part of this because they know it’s the most reputable and, as you say, the largest floating wind event in the world. A large number had to be actually turned down due to a lack of space and we somehow prefer it this way.

Last but not least, we feel that keeping the cost to attend such a three-day event to less than €400 – and €200 for small companies – also demonstrates that money is not the object here; FOWT’s only goal is to have all stakeholders meet for a few days under one roof, hear and discuss the latest info, and contribute to the acceleration of the implementation of floating wind in the renewable energy landscape. More than 60% of the participants and over 75% of the speakers will be foreign, with large delegations coming from Japan, Norway, the UK, and other countries.

Floating wind is increasingly being seen now not only as an industrial power production source around the world, but also as uniquely well-placed to energise the future Blue Economy, which encompasses aquaculture, shipping, and even late-life offshore oil and gas production. What are your hopes for the technology in the longer term?

Floating wind offers many opportunities indeed, both as a large utility-scale, one-stop-shop source of clean energy to replace thermal and nuclear plants scheduled for decommissioning (or not) and as a solution to bring renewables to remote environments currently powered with diesel generators, islands, for example.

Today’s developers are fully aware that you can’t develop an offshore project without engaging with all local stakeholders and maritime space users. Accelerating acceptability often leads to creative solutions and partnerships involving fishermen or seaweed farmers for example.

On the other hand, with floating wind becoming increasingly recognised around the world as an industry in its own right, project developers and technology providers have also been approached by other players seeing opportunities with our floating structures. I know for a fact that hydrogen production and storage – for use in shipping, for example, energy storage solutions, power supply to O&G platforms, and so on – have been the subject of exploratory discussions between leading industry players.

This might all lead to nothing concrete on the near-horizon, but it’s a clear sign that the perception of floating wind is slowly changing in the eyes of non-offshore wind industry specialists as something to definitely reckon with in the future.