Offshore wind report shows: infrastructure and logistics know-how need to develop significantly to ensure the turnaround towards renewable energy production.
The plan of the German government to increase renewable energy pro-duction includes the goal of a production capacity from offshore wind parks of 10 gigawatts until 2020 to replace the national nuclear power production. Currently there is a capacity of less than 0.5 gigawatts in place.
A new offshore report issued by the Supply Chain Consultancy Barkawi Management Consultants and the DVV Media Group concludes that 3 megawatts would have to be installed every day to reach this goal. But the currently available installation infrastructure only has the capability to install 1 megawatt within 6 days.
“Next to grid connection, financing and technology, logistics is another key success factor and major challenge in the offshore wind industry – and the one most neglected” , says Frank Reichert, Vice President for the Energy Sector at Barkawi Management Consultants. “The project ‘off-shore wind park’ is still at the very beginning from a logistics perspective. Neither ports nor ships nor crane capacities are prepared for the new requirements. Furthermore there is no real logistics concept and no streamlined standardization of logistics processes along the supply chain in sight” , adds Reichert.
Compared to mature industries such as automotive or the oil industry, the offshore wind supply chain does not yet have successful concepts in place such as “Just-in-time” or “Just-in-sequence”. Standardization of components is also not in place. Leveraging effects from serial produc-tion and standardized installations cannot be utilized.
Logistics accounts for about 20% of overall costs of an offshore wind park. The ratio is so high because of the physical dimensions of the components to be shipped as well as the demanding requirements of maritime transportation and technology. Only a joint effort of politics, ports, administration, industry partners and education will be able to succeed in realizing the ambitious goals for the German offshore wind project.
Its market volume in total is approximately 100 billion Euros until 2030. German ocean carriers alone could generate revenues of 18 billion Euros until 2020. This would mean securing about 6,000 jobs in German ship-yards. But the competition will be tough. According to Frank Reichert, especially in the UK and the Netherlands there are major infrastructure investments for offshore wind projects. It would be a disaster for the German economy as the pioneer in renewable energies and technology leader, if this potential would not be realized at least partially.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND staff, January 26, 2012