REGIONAL REVIEW

mainly iron. The European Commission has said we must not change our energy dependence to a raw materials dependency on China.”

The recently announced European Critical Raw Materials Act will be important here: it will forecast what is needed in terms of raw materials across sectors, build alliances with new source countries and reduce the high dependency for raw materials on one country. This will build a more resilient supply chain for offshore wind, Ramirez said.

In terms of installation, there is increasing interest in floating turbine installation methods as opposed to the traditional jack-up vessel installation. Ramirez also highlighted the emergence of ‘hybrid’ or cross-border projects – wind farms built with a direct connector to more than one country. These enable developments with reduced infrastructure and cabling and allow for electricity to be dispatched to either market. The first of these, the 605MW Kriegers Flak wind farm , is part of an interconnector between Denmark and Germany. Estonia and Latvia have received Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding for the Elwind cross-border wind farm in the Gulf of Riga. “We see these kind of cross-border projects will be more important in the future,” she said.

In the ports sector, meanwhile, permitting and environmental licensing issues are threatening to be the bottleneck for investment plans for facilities to support offshore wind installation and O&M, said Theis Gisselbaek, CCO at the Port of Grenaa. To date, the Danish port’s main focus has been on pre-assembly facilities for wind farm projects nearby, in particular the Kattegat area.

“We see a huge push from both the North Sea and Baltic Sea projects for port infrastructure and yet we can’t even accommodate the wind potential in Kattegat,” Gisselbaek said.

“We talk to turbine manufacturers and developers and they have two major risks. They believe they can produce the components and get staff, etc., in the supply chain but port infrastructure and installation vessels will become an issue from 2025-26.”

Opportunities For The Bold In The Baltic

The volumes foreseen to be moved for offshore wind in the Baltic Sea are enormous and hence there is a big opportunity – but the challenge is also the capacity available, said Ole Schmidt, DSV’s vice president for projects.

To date, DSV’s offshore wind focus has mainly been in the North Sea and Asia, but the company has offices in all the Baltic countries (with the exception of Russia’s Kaliningrad), all with project logistics capabilities, he said.

“DSV Projects does transport of foundations such as monopiles, transition pieces, jackets, etc., by multipurpose/heavy-lift vessels from

Ports Face Cost And Planning Dilemma

Grenaa has plans to build a second facility for offshore wind but has its own challenges. It is facing enormous building costs because of the increasing price of steel, concrete and other materials, and it has to negotiate the environmental licensing process. “We have started the process to be able to build and utilize the facility. If I say five years, it is fast – it might be six or seven years. It is the same all over Europe – it takes too long to get a permit to build.”

Such is the pressure on port space in the region, wind farm developers have been approaching Grenaa to reserve space many years before a project starts, “because they see that as the biggest threat to their execution plan,” Gisselbaek said. “We are talking to developers who want to book space for projects in 2027. However, for those that are not decided yet because of national tendering processes, they can’t reserve a port area and installation vessel for a project if they don’t know if they have won it yet.”

There may be reasonable confidence of projects to come but ports must balance their own risks. “We didn’t see a project in Kattegat for ten years and now we see three projects a year. Of course that is good, but we can’t invest in project expansion if we are only looking at projects in three to origins to marshalling points. We do tugs and barges, transport project management, risk assessment, engineering, after-sales logistics, reverse logistics and offshore logistics,” Schmidt said. “DSV is of course aware of the increased offshore wind installations coming over the next few years.”

The company is focusing on closer cooperation across the DSV Projects offices to increase market share and knowledge sharing in offshore wind, he added. “This goes for commercial, operational and technical levels. We are also working on drone deliveries to offshore wind turbines as well as to offshore platforms and to vessels.” five years. We need some back-up from the government or from owners to say ‘we support you’, and that stage has not yet arrived.”

In the meantime, ‘reservation agreements’ with developers are kept as short as possible. “Perhaps a couple of months and we negotiate in that time in contractual and technical mode to figure out if we can handle the project as the client wants. Then we need a contract. It can have some flexibilities, but it also has an obligation, such as cancellation costs.”

Gisselbaek believes that the need for port infrastructure is more of a challenge than the need for installation vessels. “Vessels are high cost, but from investment decision to building can be two or three years. For a port, it is difficult to achieve that in below five years.”

He called for more government support and a faster system for environmental licensing. As he said, container terminals can expand in stages, adding capacity as required. “But with offshore wind, you can’t say you will deliver half of what the project needs and then two years later the second half of it will come.” BB

Felicity Landon is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in the ports, shipping, transport and logistics sectors.

THOUGHT LEADER