Oceantic Network

Oceantic Network is the premier member-based organization dedicated to growing the offshore wind and other ocean renewable industries and their supply chains.

Leadership 100: Executive Summary & Meeting Notes

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Oceantic Network’s annual Leadership 100 Summit  gathers U.S. offshore wind leaders for an intimate working meeting to identify the industry’s pressing, shared challenges and develop action plans to continue growing a robust U.S. offshore wind industry and supply chain.

In April, the Network released an executive summary and meeting notes from the Leadership 100 Summit in November 2023, sharing much of the valuable insight gained by attendees with the broader offshore wind industry. Download the report below!

Key findings include:

  • The potential to foster greater supply chain investments and advancement by encouraging greater project viability in the procurement structure and by decoupling projects from port and transmission infrastructure development, activities which developers may be ill-suited to execute
  • The need to build a greater understanding of the downstream supply chain costs and increased market risk that comes from continually increasing turbine sizes and lead to less efficient development
  • The need for a greater industry-wide collaborative communications strategy to combat misinformation and increase public support for offshore wind
  • Data’s ability to strengthen the industry through building public support, reducing pre-development costs, or helping make more environmentally sound regulatory decisions

Floating offshore wind is the next chapter of the global renewable energy journey, and one Oceantic Network is eager to be at the forefront of.

Just last month, we convened industry minds, government leaders, and key maritime stakeholders in Sacramento, California to address one of the key barriers to floating on the U.S. West Coast — a shortage of port space and capable vessels.

We also launched our West Coast Supplier Council, an initiative aimed at bridging the gap between policy development and suppliers who have the industry expertise to help build a solid foundation for what’s to come.

This new, ongoing initiative is just one piece of our organization’s larger strategy to identify, connect, and support companies contributing to floating offshore wind’s advancement on the West Coast.

But building up an industry like floating offshore wind requires action from all sides.

That’s why we’ve created the FloatON Summit, a new offering at the 2024 International Partnering Forum (IPF), taking place April 22-25 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

At FloatON, we’re advancing the conversation from last month’s inaugural Floating OSW Port & Vessel Summit to include significant technological considerations, strategies for bringing new products to market, and thought-provoking approaches for scaling up the industry.

Want to hear directly from West Coast developers? What’s New & Spinning will bring project updates and procurement insights to IPF on the Exhibit Floor Stage, April 23, 24, and 25.

Oceantic Network has invited the best and brightest minds to this one-and-a-half day gathering to explain the market conditions, policy landscape, and financial and insurance mechanisms necessary to make floating offshore wind technology competitive and achieve commercialization in the United States.

One of our first FloatON panels on Wednesday, April 24 gets directly at this goal with the support of companies with global experience in floating offshore wind. Speakers from Hitachi Energy, Kiewit Energy Group, and Cierco Energy will offer insights into how to accelerate the adoption of floating technologies in the U.S.

The following day will offer an even closer look at the state of key floating technologies. Speakers in the Tech Talks session will give insight on existing challenges and new innovations in the realms of mooring and anchoring systems, array design, cables, and more. Earlier in the day, experts from Fugro, Aker Solutions, Equinor, and more will share innovative solutions to addressing mooring and anchoring challenges in seismically active areas like California, Oregon, and Hawaii, and advise project developers on how to guide decision-making given this geophysical factor.

At last month’s Floating OSW Port & Vessel Summit, many discussions focused on the infrastructure — both physical and policy — needed to construct and maintain floating wind farms in the West. Panels explored the status of California Assembly Bill 525, the Port Readiness Plan, and recapped findings from the Oceantic study, “Building a Network of Offshore Wind Ports.”

Keep an eye out for our upcoming analysis of the West Coast Supply Chain, which will leverage our Network databases examine existing industry capabilities in the region.

We will continue this theme of next steps at FloatON, and push discussions to cover more aspects of floating offshore wind technology than ever before. On Thursday morning, Tim Fischer, Global Executive Director and Vice President of Wind Business at Ramboll, will share new ways to approach market design. As new solicitations draw nearer, this presentation will explore opportunities to balance sustainability metrics and social concerns with traditional financial measures.

FloatON aims to be a forum for examining existing challenges through a fresh lens and considering the unseen potential in emerging technologies. Two Wednesday panels, “Stepping Stones to West Coast Commercialization” and “Preparing the Supply Chain: Leveraging Floating Solar as an Intermediate Phase,” seek to offer those new perspectives. Both are designed to be starting points for developing confidence in the supply chain.

To close out the Summit, Oceantic Network, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will take the stage for a discussion on the American-Made Floating Offshore Wind Readiness (FLOWIN) Prize. Speakers will share takeaways from this first-of-its-kind prize from DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, as well as learnings from the teams still actively competing to ready their floating platforms for cost-effective domestic manufacturing and commercial-scale deployment.

Want to see what else is on the FloatON Agenda? Explore both days here, and check back regularly for speaker updates.

Companies looking to break into the fast-evolving floating offshore wind space, as well as those already actively engaged, won’t want to miss the lineup of speakers and topics set to take the IPF main stage.

The Network’s 2024 U.S. Offshore Wind Market Report shares breaking details on events, market trends, supply chain advancements, and policy changes, ensuring companies in the supply chain are informed of developments that impact their business. This report is available exclusively for Network members. Non-members can access the Executive Summary below.

Interested in reading the full report? Learn how membership can benefit your business in 2024!

The report details important developments that affected the U.S. offshore wind industry in 2023, including:

  • The offshore wind capacity approved for construction by the federal government grew 800% –from 0.93 GW to 8.3 GW in 2023.
  • Developers terminated 51% of power contracts in place prior to 2023 and are seeking financial support for another 24%.
  • Despite setbacks, 2023 saw several key announcements of new manufacturing facilities, port infrastructure upgrades, and offshore wind vessels.
  • States spent much of 2023 working to create interstate cooperation frameworks in order to stabilize regional markets, lower project costs, and increase economic benefits.

The Oceantic Network (formerly the Business Network for Offshore Wind) releases its U.S. Offshore Wind Quarterly Market Report in April, July, October, and January. Each builds off our U.S. Offshore Wind Annual Market Report and provides key analysis of both federal and state government activities impacting the U.S. offshore wind industry. Quarterly Reports ensure companies are informed on offshore wind industry developments affecting their business.  

The period from July to September of 2023 (Q3) is notable for substantial development of the U.S. supply chain, particularly when it comes to shipbuilding and secondary steel work, as the nation’s first two commercial-scale projects went from steel in the water to blades in the sky. As Vineyard Wind and South Fork Wind sit on the precipice of delivering their first power to the grid, the pipeline of projects approved for construction has tripled in size with more projects just weeks away from achieving final approval themselves. 

The report details important developments that affected the U.S. offshore wind industry in the third quarter of 2023, including: 

  • The pipeline of projects permitted for construction tripled in the third quarter of 2023, up to 2.7 GW, with more approvals expected to come in the fourth quarter.  
  • Three projects, totaling 3.2 GW, have officially announced contract terminations. Each project will attempt to secure a new contract in upcoming state procurement rounds.    
  • East Coast states increased their coordination, highlighted by new procurement rounds in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  
  • Vessel-building and secondary steel manufacturing delivered strong performances among offshore wind supply chain subsectors.  
  • New York is expected to award new power agreements in the fourth quarter, and with that could come new investments in turbine blade and nacelle facilities. 

The Network’s report, Building a National Network of Offshore Wind Ports: A $36B Plan for Domestic Clean Energy Infrastructure highlights the urgent need for both public and private investment in the port infrastructure projects needed to meet the U.S.’s offshore wind power generation goals. Authored by Brian Sabina, CEO of Clean Energy Terminals and the Network’s Ports Working Group, the report lays out a $36 billion plan for developing domestic port infrastructure to help the U.S. reach its offshore wind deployment goals of 30 GW by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050. It offers practical cost and timing requirements for needed projects to ensure ports are ready to meet current and future demand. The report also outlines nine approaches state and federal policymakers could take to encourage private investment, either by subsidizing portions of the infrastructure costs or by de-risking projects to drive confidence and cost-efficiency.   

While development of the U.S. offshore wind industry has accelerated rapidly in the past two years, the industry’s long-term ability to scale and meet demand faces key bottlenecks and hurdles. That includes the U.S. port infrastructure system, which is currently unable to support projected offshore wind component manufacturing and project deployment. Already, more than $2.5 billion has been invested in U.S. ports, but unleashing the full potential of the industry requires a new understanding of long-term port requirements needs and development timelines to enable sustainable offshore wind growth that will create thousands of manufacturing, logistics, and operations jobs. 

The Report’s key findings include:  

  • Port infrastructure is one of the most significant bottlenecks impeding the advancement of the United States offshore wind industry.  
  • The U.S. needs approximately 110 port development sites across the East Coast, West Coast, and the Gulf of Mexico to support the full buildout of the industry (35 are already in development.)  
  • Without additional government funding and policy supports that incentivize private investment into U.S. offshore wind port infrastructure, port capacity will continue to be a major offshore wind deployment constraint across the country.  
  • The total cost to address the nation’s offshore wind port infrastructure gap is estimated to be $36 billion over the next decade when realistically accounting for construction cost inflation.   

Download and read Building a National Network of Offshore Wind Ports now. 

The Network’s report, Building a Collaborative Data Strategy for the U.S. Offshore Wind Industry highlights the need for and benefits of developing a strategic, industry-wide approach to collecting and using data in the offshore wind sector. Authored by the Network’s Data & Digitalization Working Group (DDWG), the report outlines the positive impact a collaborative approach would have on offshore wind development in the U.S., making the case for widespread data sharing to increase efficiency industry-wide.

The U.S. industry has ramped up construction, recently celebrating steel in the water on the first two commercial-scale projects, and now sits at a crucial tipping point. It has become increasingly important for industry stakeholders to consider offshore wind as a collective, critical energy infrastructure system that requires collaboration on data collection strategies that allow the industry to work together to improve maintenance procedures, turbine efficiency, and cost projections. 

The Report’s key findings include:

  • The high value of data to developers means that some current data collection work is done privately, making data less accessible to industry stakeholders.  
  • The industry needs to approach a strategy for environmental data collection, storage, and sharing on a larger, more comprehensive scale to support industry-wide learning, overcome obstacles, and make the permitting process more efficient.
  • Standardization in data collection is key to ensuring that all stakeholders are able to make full use of lessons learned.

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