Floating offshore wind has the potential to play a significant role in delivering a global net zero. In addition to well established markets such as the UK, US and South East Asia, the sector is growing rapidly across the globe with emerging players such as China and India potentially sharing in the floating wind projection of 250GW by 2050.
In this context, the Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE) developed and delivered the “Floating Offshore Wind International Market Opportunities” project, in collaboration with OWC Ltd. The project has identified leading international FOW markets by assessing all global markets against a range of key enabling criteria. Leading markets have been scored and ranked against an attractiveness index, with both near term establishing and establishing markets, and longer term emerging, and potential markets assessed.
The project outcomes provide an overview of the potential scale and regional distribution of deployment over coming decades. Recent projections suggesting that more than 250GW of floating offshore wind could be deployed may start to look increasing conservative – with just 1% of the potential available resource in near-term markets having the potential to accommodate more than 240GW, and just 5% of the potential available resource able to accommodate 1,200GW. It is clear that there is huge global potential for floating offshore wind.
