New Offshore Wind Research To Help Reach Net Zero Energy Goals

Sixteen new projects will be unveiled this month to help scale up and industrialise offshore wind to meet international Net Zero energy targets.

The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA), a collaboration between nine offshore wind developers, is launching 16 new research and development (R&D) projects this year. These span five key areas of logistics and operations and maintenance, cables, electrical systems, foundations, yield and performance.

As a range of countries plan to accelerate their Net Zero or low carbon energy transitions, offshore wind will play a key role. This month the UK Government released its new Energy Security Strategy which aims to boost low carbon energy generation from 60% of electricity production to 95% by 2030. This followed Germany’s announcement in March to spend €200bn on its ‘Energiewende’ energy transition and Easter Package commitments to reach 70GW of offshore generation by 2045.

The 16 planned projects will optimise and scale renewable energy, critical to meeting these targets. Tenders for each will be available to apply for this month through the Carbon Trust’s website.

One upcoming project will conduct research looking at the impact of climate change on offshore wind resource. Research has already been conducted into the impact of climate change on global wind patterns, but this new project will enable windfarm owners to have a better understanding of the future impacts on local wind resource.

Another will look at ways of reducing the emissions associated with installation and operations of offshore wind farms. While the turbines produce renewable energy, many of the vessels servicing the offshore farms are powered by fossil fuels.

Hybrid electric vessels, and even full emission-free vessels, are becoming more common, but the charging infrastructure is not widely available for offshore farms. The OWA is developing a new industry standard for charging vessels offshore and will extend this work to accelerate deployment of charging infrastructure within ports.

These two tenders, and 14 further projects, will become available to apply for this month via the Carbon Trust’s website. Any companies working in these areas are encouraged to keep an eye on our website this April as the projects go live. Interested parties can register here to learn about future tenders.