UK Offshore Wind Group on Asia Tour

The UK Department for International Trade (DIT) has organised a mission to China and Taiwan to promote British expertise in the offshore wind industry and assist in the development of the sector in these two countries.

The design, engineering and project management consultancy Atkins was part of the mission to Asia and was represented by Andy Thompson, the company’s market director for offshore and onshore assets.

“China and Taiwan represent huge potential growth markets for offshore wind and we’re keen to share our experiences from the UK and Europe to help develop the market and the industry in Asia. It has been great to meet so many different highly competent companies and we’re looking forward to working with them in the future as we branch out into offshore wind in this region,” Thompson said.

China plans to invest CNY 2.5 trillion (USD 361 billion) in renewable energy projects by 2020. The country added further 592MW worth of commissioned offshore wind farm capacity in 2016, bringing its total to 1,627MW.

The government of Taiwan is actively promoting wind energy, with a particular focus on offshore development, as part of its aim to achieve around 14GW of renewable generation capacity by 2030. The country plans to have 4.2GW of installed wind capacity, both offshore and onshore, by 2030.

In October 2016, Taiwan added its first 8MW of installed offshore wind capacity via the Formosa 1 project.

Atkins is a designer of offshore wind farm substation platforms and wind turbine foundations, with some of the more recent projects including the recently installed XL monopile foundations at Statoil’s Dudgeon offshore wind farm, and the offshore substations at DONG Energy’s Burbo Bank Extension and Race Bank offshore wind farms in the UK.