8CIOReview | | NOVEMBER 2022IN MY OPINIONTHE FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND INDUSTRY IS ADVANCING WITH CONFIDENCEBy Jonathan Boutrot, Offshore Wind Market Leader, Bureau Veritas GroupIndustry experts are no longer wondering about the profitability or the technical viability of offshore wind farms or how to manage prototyping. Instead, a spirit of optimism has been on full display at industry events, and discussion is now focusing on how to ensure that supply chains are ready to deliver these projects.A small but fast-growing subset of the offshore wind sector are floating offshore wind turbines. These floating turbines are tethered to the seabed by catenary or taught mooring lines, rather than on fixed foundations. The floating offshore wind sector's worldwide installed capacity currently sits at about 100MW. While that doesn't yet measure up to the 35GW of fixed offshore wind in operations, its current project pipeline includes an impressive 30GW to be installed by 2030.In the past few weeks alone, a licence has been granted for the development of up to 1.3GW of floating offshore wind capacity in South Korea, an auction was concluded for offshore wind licenses in Scottish waters, raising almost £700m in option fees and with a total potential capacity of 25GW. More than half of these projects, totalling 13GW of capacity, will use floating wind turbines.Despite this growing industry confidence, there are still hurdles to overcome. Currently, there is no uniform regulatory framework for the industry, with local regulations varying widely from country to country. Certification of the wind farm is usually required by the Project Developers and insurers, but National Authorities usually have additional requirements concerning environmental protection, health and safety, and regulatory controls coming from the Labour or Construction Codes. Jonathan Boutrot
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