Some 70GW of floating wind power plant will be turning by 2040 – a near-1,000-fold expansion of the current global fleet – as international supply chains take shape to support development of commercial-scale projects around the world, including off many island nations, according to a new market analysis from UK-based international low carbon advisory body the Carbon Trust.

The forecast – the most bullish to-date in the industry, with analysts to this point varying widely in their 2030 estimations of the sector’s growth, from 6-15GW – sees up to 10.7GW of floating wind by 2030, before the market mushrooms, with a total project value approaching £200bn ($250bn) by the end of the next decade.

“To date, 73MW of floating wind capacity has been installed globally, however there has been a relatively low level of new capacity installed since 2018,” said Carbon Trust offshore wind manager Kyle Spearman.

“The lack of installation activity is not representative of the significant project development activity that has been ongoing with key industry players in preparation for the next generation of projects.

“The time is now for the floating wind industry to look to pre-commercial and commercial projects to deliver the cost reduction necessary for the sector to compete with other renewable energy options … and demonstrate the opportunity for the supply chain globally to support and invest in floating wind.”

The Carbon Trust forecasts growth of the floating wind sector to initially be spearheaded by Europe, with Asia “pulling ahead” in the late 2030s led by South Korea and Japan.

Spearman highlighted the expectation that floating wind would become “a key sector for low-carbon power generation and economic growth in geographies where deeper waters do not allow for bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines”, a view shared by the International Finance Corporation, which calculates 2TW of a total 3TW of ‘emerging’ market offshore wind will be in water depths suitable only to floating arrays.

The Carbon Trust analysis comes with the release of the latest work from an ongoing joint industry project (JIP) designed to look at the key facing floating wind’s commercialisation.

The second report from the Floating Wind JIP – supported by a developer consortium made up EDF, EnBW, Equinor, Kyuden Mirai Energy, Orsted, Engie, EDPR), Parkwind, RWE, ScottishPower, Shell, SSE, Tepco, Total, Vattenfall and Wpd – found that “significant technical challenges [were still] to be overcome” to reach commercial-scale deployment of floating wind farms that would require “innovation from supply chain and developers [alike]”.

Among these are the lack of market-ready high voltage dynamic export lines for floating wind arrays – the Carbon Trust has a competition in process between five cable manufacturers develop and test suitable designs – and “limited availability” of heavy lift floating construction vessels forecast for offshore operations and maintenance in the coming decades.

Issues remain too around monitoring and inspection on floating wind farms, with a sub-study concluding “improvement is needed in both the collection of data and its usage to inform and manage asset integrity” for operational projects, and for new techniques including digital twinning and unmanned O&M vessels to be explored as “cost effective solutions”.

On the upside, however, the Floating Wind JIP found “only minor modifications” would likely be needed to scale up existing field-proven platform designs for the next-generation of ultra-large turbines now coming to market.

Floating wind power developments of 500MW and larger – generally seen as the ‘next step’ in scaling up of the sector from its current pre-commercial level – are in development in all major maritime regions. Norwegian energy giant Equinor recently started seabed surveys for an 800MW project off South Korea, and off the UK, the floating wind fraternity is circling for a commercial-scale slice of the deep water acreage being auctioned by the Scottish government as part of its ScotWind tender.

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