OPINION

Growth in Offshore Wind and Clean Vessel Construction

By Danny Terlip, Lead Engineer at Zero Emission Industries

To support this burgeoning industry, companies will need to make massive investments into wind farm construction and maintenance equipment, which currently doesn’t exist.

The U.S. commercial maritime industry is poised to see major growth in the next 10 years due to construction and maintenance of domestic renewable energy technology. Offshore wind turbines are one of the most promising technologies of this renewable energy exponential growth curve. Offshore wind resources are sited geographically near the bulk of U.S. electricity demand, produce peak output during peak demand and the farms will drive the creation and protection of tens of thousands of new and existing U.S.-based jobs.

The U.S. has set ambitious goals for energy production from offshore wind, targeting 30 GW of production capacity by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050. This has been met with action. The offshore wind industry development and operational pipeline in the U.S. experienced a 24% growth in 2020, according to the DOE, to a value of 35 GW potential, yet less than 1% of that is currently operational. The global market is nearly an order of magnitude larger.

To support this burgeoning industry, companies will need to make massive investments into wind farm construction and maintenance equipment, which currently doesn’t exist. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act can aid some of this, which allocated up to $17 billion for ports and the marine industry.

The offshore wind industry will require a large variety of vessel types and sizes for construction, operation, and maintenance (see Vessel Construction story on page 16). The blades of turbines today span a diameter of 500 feet, with future turbine diameters expected to cover 800 feet. Turbine towers can be fixed to firm foundations on the sea floor, but most of the offshore wind resources are in deep water and thus will likely utilize a tethered floating base design. Clearly, robust vessel fleets in multiple regions around the country will be required.

Many shipbuilders, vessel operators and fuel providers are looking to the future of the maritime industry. Not only are the International Maritime Organization, the U.S. federal government, and multiple states releasing more stringent emissions and efficiency requirements, it is common to see wind farm construction solicitations requiring clean construction vessels or giving higher scores to bidders that include them. It is clear that emissionreducing technologies are badly needed. This large effort into retrofitting and new construction is a perfect opportunity for the maritime industry to move to zeroemission technology, though powering these large and small vessels with zero emissions engines requires careful analysis of the available options.

Sandia National Laboratories showed that zero-emission powertrains can meet the range and power requirements for many different vessel types. For limited range vessels that have time for recharging, batteries can sometimes meet a zero-emissions vessel’s needs. But for the mission lengths needed to support wind farm construction and maintenance, hydrogen is the only zero-emission fuel that can do the job. Liquified hydrogen is especially well suited for large, long-haul vessels due to its high specific energy: three times higher than maritime liquid fossil fuels and 20 times more energy storage density than today’s state-of-the-art marine battery systems. Additionally, the U.S. is the largest producer of liquid hydrogen in the world at 241 tons per day, with thousands of tons per day more in the planning stages.

The synergies that exist between hydrogen and offshore wind farm construction and operation offer economic and environmental opportunities that stand to benefit many industry players. The U.S. is uniquely positioned to be a leader in this area. Hydrogen fuel can be produced and stored onsite using energy generated by wind turbines, making hydrogen an excellent energy storage medium for remote offshore wind farms.

Hydrogen can be collected by transfer vessels and brought to highest value markets or could take advantage of existing offshore pipelines for transport, thus drastically reducing subsea cabling costs. Both improve the economics of a wind farm by converting previously curtailed (unusable) energy into a high value asset. Operation and maintenance costs of the wind farms can also be reduced if hydrogen powered vessels refuel at the job site, extending their operational capabilities. Not too bad for also being zero emissions.

Maritime applications pose additional challenges to the technology, yet many solutions already exist today. A pilot project, named PosHYdon, demonstrating the benefits of hydrogen production from offshore wind, is currently underway in the Netherlands. A number of zero emission vessels have been deployed globally to date, including the U.S. flagged Sea Change powered by our hydrogen fuel cell system. A once-in-a-generation opportunity for the U.S. maritime industry is on the horizon.