The UK could deploy more than twice Boris Johnson’s new 2030 ambition for floating wind if the government and industry think beyond pilot projects and make scale the priority, said a senior Equinor executive.

Stephen Bull, who leads on renewables in the UK for the Norwegian energy giant that’s a pioneer in floating, said there is potential to see at least 2GW installed off British waters by the end of the decade, exceeding the 1GW highlighted by the Prime Minister in a speech on offshore wind on Tuesday.

Bull – who also chairs industry body RenewableUK – told Recharge “it’s fantastic that the government has been so clear in putting a target or goal” but it now needs to put the right measures in place.

RenewableUK on Wednesday said it is “confident” Britain could have 20GW of floating turning in its waters by 2050, as it set out a policy wish-list for a sector it claimed could support 17,000 jobs by then and generate £33.6bn ($43bn) of economic value.

Bull pointed to a 40% reduction in costs between its 30MW Hwyind Scotland project, installed in 2017 as the world’s first commercial array, and the 88MW Hywind Tampen it just started building to decarbonise an oil field off Norway as an example of what the floating sector could achieve.

We don’t need more pilot or demonstration projects across the world, and definitely not in the UK.

“But we can only do that with larger deployment, with scale” said the Equinor executive.

“We don’t need any more pilot or demonstration projects across the world, and definitely not in the UK.”

Bull called for at least 500MW to be allocated to floating in the UK’s next contract-for-difference (CfD) renewables auction scheduled for 2021. “If you had that on an annual or biannual basis you start to build up the right type of deployment size,” said Bull.

The government is to decide soon how floating will be treated in the auction in terms of its place in competing for ‘pots’ of support with other technologies, amid concerns that requiring it to go head-to-head with fixed-bottom offshore wind – whose power is currently far cheaper – would inevitably see floating projects lose out.

Bull said floating wind needs “another pot or some sort of bespoke CfD to make this work”, which would allow Equinor and others developing the technology to go head-to-head with “like with like” systems.

Larger, regular auctions would also give visibility to the UK’s supply chain, said Bull. The Johnson government has already identified the UK’s potential as an exporter to the global floating industry.

For its part, the industry can start sharing data on environmental impacts as part of an effort to speed up a permitting process that is often too slow, he added.

To go beyond the 2030 target towards 2050 – when some commentators reckon the UK will need 75GW or more of fixed and floating offshore wind to power its net-zero ambitions – Bull said the UK will have to look at bringing new areas of its seas into play, pointing to areas off southwest England and in the Irish Sea, and big potential off Scotland, where the upcoming ScotWind leasing round will be among the first globally to accommodate floating.

“Why couldn’t we have a floating offshore wind project in the UK that could help decarbonise oil and gas,” said Bull, referring to the huge fossil fuel legacy off Scotland.

'World leadership'

Bull’s comments came as UK energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng said there is “no reason why the UK cannot not seize the opportunity of world leadership in this technology”.

Kwarteng, speaking to the Floating Offshore Wind 2020 organised by RenewableUK and Scottish Renewables, said the sector is "a hugely exciting opportunity and a dynamic area of growth which sits squarely and centrally in the government's goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050".

As well as the 30MW Hywind Scotland, the UK is home to a floating pipeline that includes the 50MW Kincardine, also off Scotland, and the Total-backed 96MW Erebus off Wales.

Recent market analysis from UK-based international low carbon advisory body the Carbon Trust calculates over 70GW of floating wind could 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.

The forecast sees up to 10.7GW of floating wind globally by 2030, before the market mushrooms, with a total project value approaching €220bn ($250bn) by the end of next decade.

DNV GL, in its latest Energy Transition Outlook, forecasts some 260GW of floating wind turning by 2050, but hinges on the sector reducing LCOE to €40-60/MWh from levels today that are three times that.

Wind

'No more pilot projects': Equinor says UK must think big to beat Johnson's floating wind goal