Asian nations counting on offshore wind farms to meet clean energy goals are facing an increasing shortage of ships for installing the massive turbines in the sea.
As countries embark on a rapid buildout of wind power in the next decade, builders cannot churn out the support vessels fast enough to keep up, shipping experts have said.
The situation is only going to get worse as blades get longer and require bigger ships to handle them.
Photo: Reuters
“Specialized vessels are going to be in demand for projects in Taiwan and South Korea,” said Sean Lee, chief executive officer of shipyard Marco Polo Marine Ltd. “There will be more and more projects coming up, and a big wave of them in Japan from 2028.”
The complicated job of planting a wind turbine in the seabed requires several types of ships specially designed for the work: Turbine installers feature massive cranes capable of hoisting objects weighing as much as 700 tonnes. Commissioning service operation vessels, or CSOVs, provide adjustable gangways that allow technicians to reach the turbine blades.
Excluding China, there are only about 10 turbine installing ships and a few dozen CSOVs operating worldwide, according to shipbroker Clarksons.
By 2030, demand for turbine installers would outpace supply by about 15 vessels, while the gap for CSOVs would widen to more than 145 CSOVs from 30, it estimates.
China has 84 ships capable of installing wind turbines, according to trade group Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
However, the majority of those can only handle small turbines, with many having been converted from oil and gas ships. These are unlikely to meet specifications in Europe or elsewhere in Asia.
The shortage of ships is significant for Asia as the GWEC predicts the continent will top Europe as the region with the most new offshore wind installations through 2026.
A lack of vessels could set back countries’ efforts to diversify away from fossil fuels.
“The potential crunch is likely to occur in the mid-to-late 2020s as more countries begin constructing their wind farms to meet 2030 national targets,” said Bahzad Ayoub, a senior analyst at consultant Westwood Global Energy Group.
Many of the ships have been deployed to Europe, Lee said.
To fill the gap in Asia, tugs and support vessels that were serving oil rigs in Southeast Asia have been diverted to wind farms, he said.
However, using oil and gas ships cannot be a long-term solution and the current fleet of installation vessels might soon become obsolete as turbine sizes grow to be almost as long as the Eiffel Tower.
As technology advances, wind farms could see these lengths increase to 275m by 2030, the GWEC has said.
Larger turbines mean the required lifting heights and crane capacities of vessels installing the blades must increase, Ayoub said.
Shipping companies are racing to fill the gap. Marco Polo is building a CSOV by next year to be chartered by Vestas Wind Systems A/S in Taiwan. Cadeler A/S has ordered four turbine installation vessels for next year to 2026 from Cosco Heavy Industries, while Maersk Supply Service has ordered one from Sembcorp Marine Ltd for delivery to the US in 2025.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS