Floating wind farms: how to make them the future of green electricity
Since 2010, wind energy has seen sustained growth worldwide, with the amount of energy generated by offshore wind increasing by nearly 30% each year. Countries around the world need to ramp up renewable energy supply quickly to meet growing demand and rapidly reduce emissions. Despite this urgency, offshore wind currently provides less than 1% of the world’s electricity supply.
Many of the prime shallow-water locations for building wind farms are being developed. But the potential of offshore wind still remains largely untapped, per the graph of worldwide installed capacity below.
The reason for this untapped potential is that 80% of the wind blows uninterrupted further offshore – in water deeper than 60 metres, where turbines embedded in the sea floor are tricky to construct.
The solution could be floating offshore wind farms. So what’s holding them back?
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