On 12 June 2023, NorthWind was represented at Statkraftkonferansen (the Statkraft conference) by Centre Director John Olav Tande during a session on wind power.
The conference focused on ways to faciliate the green shift by addressing key aspects that we are currently facing, including the security of supply, high energy prices, nature conservation, and – not least – climate change.
NorthWind was featured in the final session of the conference, entitled Dypdykk i havvind (“A Deep Dive into Offshore Wind”), led by Claus Sonberg.
John Olav Tande’s presentation, “The role of research to succeed with offshore wind”, focused on the challenges that need to be addressed in order to achieve Norway’s goal of 30 GW of offshore wind farms by 2050, and to develop a leading supply industry with a major export business.
Tande described offshore wind as a “giga opportunity”, and stated that “my vision is that floating wind will be cost-competitive with bottom-fixed [wind turbines]”.
He pointed out that reaching the ambitions will require scaling up and accelerating the development of knowledge and innovation. A holistic approach is needed, and this exemplifies one of the advantages of addressing issues in a centre like NorthWind rather than in separate projects. He concluded by calling for stronger international collaboration and the establishment of a European Centre of Excellence on offshore wind. Such a Centre would build on already existing collaboration between leading research and industry partners in Europe but developed into a European version of NorthWind. Floating wind, large-scale integration and sustainable development are potential focus areas.
Tande argued that a European Centre of Excellence will enable more efficient international collaboration than the current project by project approach. It will save costs and accelerate the development. This is paramount to succeed with the offshore wind ambitions in Norway and Europe, and a natural follow-up on the Ostend agreement between Norway, BE, DK, NL, GE, FR, IE, and UK to install 300 GW of offshore wind by 2050. R&D is vital to reduce risks, costs and develop a leading sustainable industry providing prosperity, and clean, reliable and affordable energy.
Following his presentation, Tande participated in a panel discussion “Challenges and solutions for a new industry to be developed at sea”, with Richard Sandford (Vice President of Offshore Wind at BP) and Gry Åmodt (VP Offshore Wind Nordics at Statkraft).
You can watch the presentation and panel discussion (as well as the entire conference) on YouTube:
