Roland Berger expects further growth in billion euro offshore wind market

Munich - In their new study entitled "Offshore Wind Toward 2020

In the same year, global investment to ramp up offshore wind power will have reached around 130 billion Euro. Yet huge challenges still lie ahead for the industry: Wind farms are growing in size all the time. They are moving further and further offshore. And they are being constructed in ever deeper waters. These factors are driving up the cost of investment and making projects more complex. If it is to compete with other forms of energy, the offshore wind industry must therefore sharply cut the cost of energy generation. A reduction of around 30% between now and 2020 would allow electricity generated from offshore wind power to be sold at an average price of 9 euro cents per kWh. But that will require technological innovation, new financing models and a stable political framework.

"The offshore wind industry will become increasingly important in the years ahead, because transforming the energy system without this one central pillar would be difficult to imagine," says Marcus M. Weber, Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. "That makes it all the more important for the industry to quickly achieve cost-cutting industrialization effects, and for the government to stake out a reliable framework." The market for offshore wind power will continue to grow in the coming years. Between now and 2020, the experts at Roland Berger expect to see the global investment volume rise to 130 billion Euro. Europe is leading the charge, with its countries having set themselves ambitious goals. But that will take some heavy investment. While around 7 billion Euro a year is currently being invested to expand offshore wind power, this figure is set to double to more than 14 billion Euro by 2020. The Roland Berger experts predict that, in the same period, Asia's investment volume will rise from 1.6 billion Euro a year today to as much as 5 billion Eruo a year.

"Yet this global growth in offshore wind power will be accompanied by major challenges," Weber stresses, explaining that "tomorrow's offshore wind farms will be bigger and further away from the coast." While the offshore wind farms currently in operation have an average capacity of around 200 MW, the average for the future wind farms being approved today has risen to around 340 MW. "The trend toward larger wind farms is helping to sharply reduce production costs," Weber notes. In new projects, wind farms are also moving further away from the coast

Source: IWR Online, 07 May 2013