New supply chain strategies emerge for farshore, deepwater wind farms

Despite a buoyant European offshore wind market, developers are facing into a whole bundle of purchasing headaches due to the seemingly limited number of suppliers in the offshore wind energy business.The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) says 9.3 gigawatt (GW) of new wind power capacity was installed in the EU during 2010 with offshore wind power installations growing 51 per cent from 582MW in 2009 to 883MW last year. With further projects in the pipeline from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and most recently France, Europe will continue to be the largest offshore wind energy-producing region in the world for years to come.

Utility-led projects are the lynchpin of the offshore wind industry’s continuing progress. Justin Wilkes, Director of Policy at EWEA noted: “Projects led by utilities are less affected thanks to their ability to fund investments from their balance sheets”.

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