The futures of floating wind, large-scale storage and carbon capture – and their roles in an era when energy security is at the top of governments’ agendas – were just some of the topics tackled at Recharge’s first in-person Energy Transition Forum.

The event, held in London in conjunction with Recharge sister title Upstream. was given a glimpse of a future ‘North Sea 3.0’ in which floating wind turbines help decarbonise offshore hydrocarbon production as well as powering a huge new green fuels industry – all served by vast, transformational port complexes.

A panel devoted to the emerging floating wind sector was told that it could learn some important lessons from the “massively collaborative” oil & gas industry, which has a track record of working together to achieve cost breakthroughs.

The key role floating is set to play in the global energy shift was, meanwhile, underlined by another stride towards 4.5GW of floating wind leasing off California as US federal authorities concluded a key environmental assessment.

The Energy Transition Forum was not the only agenda-setting event from the Recharge stable to be held in Europe over the last week or so.

The Recharge Hydrogen Summit in Hamburg brought together leading figures from the fast-emerging green H2 sector to discuss the key issues it faces – not least the principle of additionality, which the head of trade body Hydrogen Europe said remains critically important to its development.

The Summit, held as part of the first H2Expo at WindEnergy Hamburg, also heard a list of the five bottlenecks holding up progress on a green hydrogen ecosystem in Europe – almost all of them connected to the ramp up of renewable energy.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led tributes after the sudden death last weekend of one of the wind power industry’s pioneers, OEM Suzlon’s founder Tulsi Tanti.

Tanti, who died at the age of 64 after a cardiac arrest, over two decades grew Suzlon to become a globally significant player in the sector.