The importance of innovation and attracting talent

With ongoing explosive growth projected, Offshore Renewables is certainly one-to-watch for 2022 and beyond

COP26 pledges in Glasgow to deepen national emissions cuts were a hopeful signal for those invested in the energy transition. To date, that transition is largely being fuelled by wind power, and increasingly offshore wind, in order to deliver green electricity to our energy-hungry economies. With S&P Global Ratings recently predicting that global installed capacity for offshore wind will surpass 180 GW by 2030, a six-fold increase on current levels, and other analysts predicting even more explosive growth – the GWEC 2020 annual report, for example, forecasts 234 GW of offshore wind by 2030 - it’s no wonder that those charged with realising these ambitions are increasingly concerned about the skills needed to deliver this build out.

“The skills gap is high on our agenda,” says Mark Calverley, founder of Metocean data consultancy Blue Ocean Consulting and co-chair of the IMarEST’s Offshore Renewables SIG (ORSIG), which has a dedicated skills working group. “It’s simply not feasible to support all of this growth with the number of people in the industry right now. That’s why outreach programmes, highlighting role models and mentoring schemes are so important to show people the opportunities in offshore wind and the different routes into the industry.”

Attracting talent

The ORSIG is keen to encourage more graduates into the industry. Calverley sees an important role for mentoring schemes, not just to support young people coming into the industry but also to upskill the existing workforce with the new skills and knowledge coming out of colleges and universities. “It’s a process that works both ways because we don’t just have a skills issue – we have a retraining issue,” he says.

There’s extensive offshore knowhow in the oil and gas sector and the ORSIG is keen to tap into this pool of talent in order to deliver on the explosive growth targets for offshore wind, particularly as the industry seeks to push into floating wind to capture winds deeper offshore, particularly in South East Asia, northern Europe and the US. “The oil and gas sector are the real experts when it comes to floating structures such as TLPs, spars and semi-subs,” says Calverley. “There’s a lot we can learn.”

This includes learning from the safety culture of the oil and gas industry as well as looking for opportunities to harmonise standards and certification to improve efficiencies and optimise supply chain capacity. “There’s one certification for the offshore oil and gas industry and a completely different one for an offshore wind job, which creates issues for services companies working across both industries,” says Calverley.

New technologies and mindsets

Innovation and technology are also firmly on the ORSIG’s agenda for 2022, particularly as automated cloud processing, machine learning and AI begin to optimise offshore wind operations. A 2021 survey of IMarEST professionals also tipped drones, satellite imaging, over-the-horizon connectivity, quantum computing, augmented reality, sensor development, 3D technology, crawlers and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) as promising technologies for the coming decade. Leveraging the potential of these technologies is likely to require new skills and mindsets and will further intensify the push to look outside the core industry to find the talent needed to truly capitalise on digitalisation, automation, machine learning, AI and hyper-connectivity.

The ORSIG is also focused on sustainability and the circular economy. “It’s not just about using recyclable materials and ensuring old blades don’t end up in landfill,” says Calverley, stressing the importance of strategic collaboration when it comes to data collection and monitoring to help manage increasing ocean demands from multiple users. “It’s about our impact on the marine environment and other sea users and making sure we don’t damage the biodiversity of the ocean.”

These are among the issues to be discussed at the upcoming Fugro-sponsored IMarEST Oceans of Sustainable Energy Conference 2022, which will examine the challenges and opportunities of scaling up offshore wind with contributions from multidisciplinary specialists from across energy and supply chain operators, the ocean science community, policy-makers, regulators and students. In a call for presentations, the organisers have asked for 300-word abstracts to be submitted by 14 February to events@imarest.org.

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Amy McLellan is a journalist and author. She was previously editor of Energy Day. Twitter @AmyMcLellan2