RenewableUK’s Global Offshore Wind (GOW) was recently described as the Glastonbury of offshore wind. While Michael Shanks doesn’t quite have Olivia Rodrigo or Neil Young’s star quality there was certainly a healthy buzz to the conference this year. The venue certainly helps as Manchester Central is compact and well located. The big presence of developers and tier 1 suppliers also gave the feeling that GOW was the place to be.
In no particular order, some of team’s key takeaways from the conference were:
- Optimism with caution: Many UK projects moving ahead but perhaps less appetite from developers for growing their portfolios. Leasing Round 6 is likely to be competitive, but the bidding will be cautious.
- Recovery has begun but effects of lost capacity are continuing to be felt by some areas of the supply chain and will hit others in the next couple of years.
- The European turbine market needs creative solutions to avoid becoming a duopoly but also to avoid the potential for low-cost Chinese turbines to flood the market.
- Auctions should not specify turbine sizes. The OSW market has served itself well through courageous innovation over the years.
- CfD allocation round 8 (AR8) round is a hot topic. With over 17 GW of eligible projects looking to bid, industry is keen to equal last year’s record setting volumes.
- Developers do not expect the AR8 budget to be significantly higher than the last round and that clearing projects will need to demonstrate clear value for money.
- Other deepwater offshore wind (ODOW) enthusiasm is spreading after its inclusion as eligible for the AR8 auction.
- ODOW is attractive but don’t expect a fast shift from floating. Even though there may be cost savings, the credibility gap seen with floating is there also for deepwater fixed and developers may not be in a rush to pivot where planning consent is well advanced.
- ODOW projects requiring non jack-up based turbine installation will need to collaborate with turbine suppliers to develop installation solutions.
One thing is for sure: unlike Glastonbury, 2026 will not be a fallow year for offshore wind.
The BVGA team who attended this year’s Glastonbury of offshore wind was Bruce Valpy, Alun Robert, Graham Gow, Stuart Whittingham and Patrick Browne.
