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Making big waves Electrification in the European offshore market
As the European Union gears up to reach climate neutrality by 2050, electrical equipment is making a splash in the offshore market. And whether we’re supplying air for an oil & gas platform, or assisting the construction of a windmill park, we at Atlas Copco Specialty Rental play our part. Our newly developed air compressors use the latest VSD technology and are more efficient than ever to keep the offshore air free of harmful emissions, as proven by our latest offshore project at the Baltic Pipeline!
What’s the deal with the European Green Deal? In an effort to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050, this year the European Union wrote out stricter guidelines and regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions as stated in the European Green Deal. The programme, covering industries such as transportation, ICT, agriculture and offshore, plans to cut all harmful emissions (such as CO2, carbon dioxide) by 55% by 2030, versus those measured in 1990 by promoting renewable energy such as electricity as opposed to the use of fossil fuels.
All aboard sustainability! Atlas Copco has already undertaken solid efforts to reduce CO2 emissions: in March 2021 we achieved a 28% reduction in operations and transportation, compared to 2018. Our goal for 2030 is to push it even further back to 50% using sustainable methods such as developing electric machinery, buying renewable electricity, installing solar panels, and switching to biofuels in portable compressor testing. The entire North Sea is following suit as well: many windmill parks are being developed right now, and more are
sure to come in the next decade. Apart from windmill farms, the North Sea harbours 150 oil & gas drilling platforms. These depend on offshore or onshore electricity networks to supply the 10 to 50 MW needed per average platform, to keep their systems going (water purification, lighting and heating) but also to power their machinery (drilling oil and gas fields and pumping and purifying their product). Worldwide, about 5% of the gained fuel on oil & gas platforms is immediately reused to man the machinery aboard, resulting in a global 200 met-
