Ocean Winds confident it can launch offshore wind from scratch in Australia - RenewEconomy
Ocean Winds confident it can launch offshore wind from scratch in Australia | RenewEconomy
Spanish-based offshore wind company Ocean Winds says it is undaunted by the challenges posed by Australia’s as yet unformed industry, saying it’s worked in greenfield geographies before.
The company – a joint venture between Engie and EDP – is confident Australia has the capability to build a “new community of workers”, says Ocean Winds chief development officer Rafael Munilla.
“We are a Spanish company, but our asset base is not in Spain. All of the markets were new markets for us at some point or another. We were able to face the challenge and had to deliver to leave our comfort zone,” he says.
“We foresee the potential of offshore wind as an industry in Australia. This means that in creating a market we will need to create and form new talents, work hand in hand with universities, etc.”
Ocean Wind lodged applications for three projects in Victoria’s Gippsland offshore wind zone, the first offshore zone in Australia to go ahead.
It also offered a warning that if Victoria, and Australia, want to avoid delays caused by a global lack of boats, developers need enough time to prepare.
“There won’t be a problem if projects are allocated far enough in advance. The industry will be able to adapt to demand, but demand must be firm and sufficiently upstream, so we need not only to plan quickly and precisely, but above all to allocate projects to developers as quickly as possible,” Munilla says.
“It’s important to note that it takes less time to build a vessel than it does to obtain the necessary authorisations to build a project.”
Preparing for a scrap over staff
Ocean Winds will lean on 50 per cent owner Engie to source talent who can be retrained, given its experience as the owner of the Hazelwood coal power plant and connections to the Morwell community.
EDP Renewables is the other shareholder in Ocean Winds.
If it wins a permit for one or more of its three applications, recruitment will be the first step Ocean Wind takes but it says its workforce will be a mix of local and existing global employees.
“As part of our application, we developed a Resource Management Plan in which we have analysed in detail the positions, roles and capabilities that will be needed during each phase of the project, adapting to the current Australian market and helping to boost and transition the current capabilities of the workforce from other sectors,” Munilla says.
Creating from scratch a qualified workforce of marine architects, surveyors, engineers, builders and a swathe of other skilled people will be a critical challenge for the Australian offshore wind industry, as it competes with offshore gas for people with similar talents or find ways to give entirely new skills to workers.
Australia will be desperately in need of marine, civil and electrical engineers, mechanical naval architects, marine spatial planners, and people to work on GIS mapping, ports infrastructure, operations and maintenance, and workers in an onshore industry to build specialised cables and substations.
Already the likes of Flotation Energy, which has applied for a Victoria feasibility studies permit for its proposed Seadragon project, are partnering with universities to have first pick of graduates.
The team behind the Star of the South have mapped the vessels and suppliers in Gippsland that a future offshore industry can tap, and where existing skills overlap with what will be needed.
It found 70 per cent of the coal workers in the region and 60 per cent of oil and gas workers have a high or very high overlap with the needs of the budding industry.
Rachel Williamson is a science and business journalist, who focuses on climate change-related health and environmental issues.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.