Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MARINEWIND (Market Uptake Measures of Floating Offshore Wind Technology Systems (FOWTs))
Reporting period: 2024-05-01 to 2025-10-31
MARINEWIND is a 36 months CSA that will identify bottlenecks and potential opportunities to strengthen FOW role in delivering innovative solutions to system integration while exploring market, policy and regulations issues, social, financial and techno-economic optimal solutions, and provision for storage and flexibility recommendations. Its methodology is based on the analysis of the five Labs, collecting data on policy measures (WP1), societal engagement and environmental impact (WP2), financial solutions, techno-economic implications, and commercialization (WP3). The Labs are located in five countries:Portugal and the UK (actual applications of FOWT) and Greece, Spain, and Italy (planned applications). The Labs will involve industry, academia, public authorities, civil society, and green innovation. The analysis will be conveyed into the web-based Geographical Information System (webGIS) which will provide specifically tailored information on FOWT to the various stakeholders on the basis of their category, geographical location, and their goals and policy recommendations on how to have more informed RES policy and how to increase societal acceptance (WP4). The Replicability Plan will support the transfer of knowledge. It will support the investment of both private sectors and public authorities in FOWT while accelerating their commercialization and identifying critical environmental, and societal support and solutions to techno-economic barriers to their wide deployment. The objectives and impacts of the MARINEWIND project will assist and support the EC to meet the EU's goal of climate neutrality by 2050. The MARINEWIND project will contribute to generating substantial investments in FOWT by facilitating the exchange of knowledge, providing advice on how to cut down deployment times,contributing to lower market barriers and increasing societal acceptance, facilitating the interaction with other sea users, providing insights on how to minimize the environmental impact.
MARINEWIND conducted 15 co-creation workshops involving 658 stakeholders to identify existing challenges. The WebGIS has been developed as a open-source tool to provide comprehensive geographic data and insights into FOWT deployment, aiding policymakers and stakeholders in making informed decisions, and was complemented by new functionalities, allowing the submission of spatial and technical data for new OW project proposals, the access to a stakeholder database and the LCOE tool. Such tool will help relevant actors to perform a preliminary technical-economical evaluation of a hypothetical FOW farm simulating the overall cost of energy production by forecasting future macroeconomic factors. Two informative webinars for policymakers and public authorities have been realised and translated in 5 languages. The project’s analysis of policy and regulatory barriers identified key challenges and enablers, helping streamline processes and reduce deployment times. Financial, market and techno-economic analyses have explored barriers, potential solutions to reduce the time deployment of FOWT and identified five innovative funding instruments for FOW (Public-Private Partnerships, Green Public Procurement, crowdfunding) as mechanisms to mobilise private capital, share risks between public authorities and investors. To improve societal acceptance MARINEWIND partners engaged with local communities and fisheries through interviews and surveys to analyse public perception and environmental impacts, developing a set of recommendations and an action plan to address public acceptance issues and remove non-technological barriers, fostering a supportive environment for FOWT development. To minimise the environmental impact of FOWT, MARINEWIND conducted environmental studies along with an analysis of EIAs and MSP at national level. MARINEWIND has also explored advanced technological solutions (shared mooring points), hybrid systems and co-location strategies to reduce the environmental footprint, cumulative impacts and improve system resilience.
At the end of the MARINEWIND project, five KERs were identified. The Stakeholder database can be used by all relevant actors in the field to strengthen their network of stakeholders in the FOW sector or to facilitate new project activities. The webGIS provides tailored information, best practices, financing solutions, guidelines. It's expected to disseminate relevant information to local communities, while serving as a resource for other research projects requiring analysis and elaboration of geo-referenced data on FOW development. At the same time, outcomes from future projects can be integrated. The Booklet on MARINEWIND Recommendations has been exploited as a tool to disseminate analyses and project outcomes during and beyond the project for a diverse public and for a continuation of the knowledge obtained throughout the project. Finally, to enhance the exploitation efforts, the Booklet has been translated into 5 languages, including English, and was distributed to the project’s stakeholder database and target national bodies and associations for their consideration for advancements in the national offshore wind strategy. The MARINEWIND Replicability Plan provides guidelines, lessons learnt, recommendations and tools during the MARINEWIND project to facilitate the uptake of FOWT in other EU countries (non-partners). The Levelized Cost of Energy simulation tool, a web-based decision-support model that estimates the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for floating offshore wind technology (FOWT) under uncertainty. In terms of research exploitation, it can be used as a core component in follow-on projects and academic papers on FOWT market uptake, risk mitigation, and financial innovation.