Floating Wind’s Opportunity to Taiwanese Industry

OWC’s Tom Whittle – Director of Asia Pacific Operations, recently took part in a Taiwan Floating Offshore Wind Mini Series, organised by World Forum Offshore Wind to coincide with the 2021 Energy Taiwan expo.

Having worked with OWC in Taiwan for 3 years, and with 6 years’ experience in floating offshore wind, Tom contributed to the 2nd edition of the series, discussing: “The dynamics of Floating Offshore Wind for the Industry Chain”.

The discussion, chaired by Richard Burch, Offshore Wind Lead for APAC at the UK Department of International Trade, focused on the following topics:

• Why does floating offshore wind present such a significant opportunity to Taiwanese industry?
• Does the difference between bottom-fixed and floating foundations provide additional benefits to the Taiwanese market?
• What recommendations are there to accelerate industrialisation, to maximise opportunity to the Taiwanese supply chain?
• What lessons can Taiwan learn from European floating wind?
• Taiwan’s opportunity as a regional hub in floating offshore wind
• How can the industry be supported on the pathway to successful cost-reduction in floating offshore wind development?

Watch the full video below ⬇

Summary of Tom’s take-aways:

• Floating offshore wind represents a significant and existing opportunity to Taiwanese industry: It is likely that up to 10 GW of the projected 15 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2035, will be floating, due to water depth constraints and seabed area availability in the Taiwanese straight
• There is opportunity to the local supply chain in that floating offshore wind is a relatively young market in terms of technology: There is advantage to be gained by agile players in the market, who are looking to develop innovative solutions and new technology
• Taiwan has the benefit to chose the foundation solution that best suits its market and value chain: In terms of materials and manufacturing of floating foundations, the optimum solution has not yet been identified, giving markets the opportunity to define it for themselves
• Industrialisation of the Taiwanese value chain could be boosted by a number of factors, to give confidence to suppliers and manufacturers that the market is moving at pace:
  • Establishing dedicated floating wind targets
  • Defining a supply chain plan
  • Localisation requirements
  • Prescriptive requirements around floating foundation manufacture
  • Demonstration projects with government backing
• Taiwan should build on the lessons learnt from European experience in floating wind: Taiwan can learn from European floating wind demonstration and pre-commercial projects, to progress whilst avoiding similar challenges
• Start planning and engineering early on, to support projects onto the pathway to successful cost-reduction: It is important to remember the development phase for a floating offshore wind farm will take longer than for a fixed offshore wind farm

Watch the full video to get more take-aways from the discussion.