How The US Lost The Global Floating Wind Turbine Race

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Oh the irony, it burns. US taxpayers played an instrumental role in the development of new floating wind turbine platforms, which enable wind farms to sprout up in waters too deep for conventional turbines. Now all that money has gone down the drain. Other countries are reaping the benefit of the technology while the US, and its tax paying public, are left behind in the dust.

No Floating Wind Turbines For You!

The US Department of Energy has been spearheading the nation’s dive into floating wind turbine technology, motivated in part by the depth of coastal waters along part of the East coast, and most of the West coast, where conventional fixed-platform, monopile construction is impractical or downright impossible.

One early beneficiary of the program is the California startup Principle Power. The company’s floating wind turbine platform began surfacing on the CleanTechnica radar all the way back in 2009, when it secured one in a series of funding awards from the Energy Department.

Principle has launched its new WindFloat platform in waters off the coast of Portugal and France since then. More recently, the company scored manufacturing agreements for its WindFloat platforms with Korea, in furtherance of that country’s offshore wind energy plans.

Last year Principle also won a competitive Energy Department award in partnership with the firm Aker Solutions, aimed at supporting plans to manufacture and deploy WindFloat platforms in the US.

Woe is us. The dictator-adjacent Commander-in-Chief who currently occupies the Oval Office suspended the federal offshore wind lease area program, effectively torching the entire US offshore industry out of existence, floating wind turbines or not. If Principle ends up manufacturing WindFloat platforms in the US, they will go sailing off to wind farms elsewhere around the world.

There Goes $950 Million Down The Drain

Principle is just one of the moving parts in the Energy Department’s elaborate efforts to make the US a global leader in floating wind turbine technology, including supply chain fortification among other elements. In 2022, the R&D was consolidated under the “Floating Wind Shot” program. Echoing the famous Moon Shot of the 1960s, the ambitious aim was to push the cost of floating wind technology down 70% by 2035, enabling the US to tap into enough new generating capacity for tens of millions of homes and businesses.

Floating Wind Shot also enlisted the Interior Department and the Commerce Department to collaborate on planning, leasing, research, development, demonstration, and deployment. All together, the Energy Department calculates that US taxpayers invested more than $950 million in the technology between 2022 and 2024 alone, covering planning, leasing, research, development, demonstration, and deployment.

Woe is us, indeed.

A New Floating Wind Turbine Farm For Sweden

In the meantime, other floating wind turbine innovators in other nations are also bringing the technology to market. One example is the Swedish firm Hexicon, which has introduced the new “TwinWind” floating platform, designed to support two turbines. The new floating turbines have already caught the attention of Italy, which placed an order for 7.1 gigawatts’ worth of TwinWinds.

The latest news from Hexicon concerns the 2.5 gigawatt Freja Offshore floating wind turbine farm proposed for Sweden under the umbrella of a joint venture joining Hexicon with the Mainstream Renewable Power branch of Norway’s Aker Solutions.

If Aker Solutions rings a bell, scroll back up a few paragraphs and you’ll see they earned an Energy Department competitive prize last year, under their partnership with Principle. Now both companies are busy putting that investment to work elsewhere around the world.

If all goes according to plan, Freja Offshore will occupy an area off the coast of Bohuslän about 40 kilometers west of Lysekil on the west coast of Sweden. It will generate 12 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough for about 2 million Swedish households.

Floating Wind Turbines & Biodiversity

Freja Offshore also illustrates how floating wind stakeholders can make space for their turbines in crowded coastal waters against the objections of the commercial fishing industry among other competitors. Because floating wind platforms are only tethered to the seabed by slim cables, their environmental footprint is smaller than conventional monopile turbines. That opens up the potential for compatibility with marine areas that are protected from commercial fishing.

The turbines in Freja Offshor will be located in Natura 2000, a network of designated biodiversity preservation areas in the EU. “Bratten, which borders the area where Mareld has been granted permission, hosts a unique ecosystem that plays a vital role in supporting marine species and habitats,” Hexicon explains.

“The permit demonstrates that the project can be carried out with respect for the area’s high natural values and that offshore wind power can coexist with protected environments,” they add.

That’s Okay, We Can All Buy A Tesla EV Instead

Freja Offshore still needs three more permits before construction can begin. In the meantime, Hexicon notes that it is already active in the African and Asian markets as well as in Europe.

On its part, Aker Solutions is not letting the floating wind grass grow under its feet. Fresh off its prizewinning partnership with Principle Power last spring, the company is busy working with ABB and other stakeholders on the UK’s 560-megawatt Green Volt floating offshore wind project. Once up and running in 2029, Green Volt will churn out 1.5 terawatt-hours of clean electricity for the UK grid.