Summary
Few doubt that floating wind represents the next step of offshore development, but as an emerging application requiring considerable engineering feats, the sector remains one of the industry's riskier propositions.
Floating offshore wind power | Photo by Windcycle Energy
The Asia-Pacific region has some of the deepest waters on earth – if you inverted Mount Everest and placed it in the Mariana Trench, it still wouldn't reach the bottom. This means that for offshore wind power generation, fixing the turbines to the seabed by conventional methods is an almost impossible task. However, floating offshore wind, where conventional turbines are housed on floating platforms in deep-sea areas can overcome this hurdle.
But it's not just a technical solution – the wind typically blows strongest where the sea is deepest. Floating wind is as much opportunity as necessity. As a result, the major countries of East Asia are all eagerly looking into this area.
In October 2023, the Japanese Government announced four candidate areas for demo floating wind projects with around 30 megawatts (MW) per location. South Korea, meanwhile, has abundant floating wind potential. The Global Wind Energy Council reckons the nation has 624 gigawatts (GW) of untapped technical offshore wind capacity, with a significant proportion of it floating. According to wind developer Orsted, 20% of new offshore wind by the mid-2030s could be floating.
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In the deepest part of the world's oceans, floating wind power is booming.#ClimateChange#ClimateChangeAsia#JapanGreenInnovation#SouthKoreaGreenInnovation
Link:
[1]https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9bb61b32-43eb-4b8b-b81f-cb5234ab58c1