Expanding Nordic offshore wind

With backing from Nordic Innovation, a large international consortium will be facilitating collaboration and development of Nordic ports in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The goal is to make Nordic ports ready for the expanding offshore wind industry with a stronger green infrastructure and new value chains across developers, manufactures and sub-contractors for offshore wind.

As wind turbines are growing in weight and size, great demands are placed on new and existing offshore wind ports alike. In this project, 8 Nordic ports and super sites will enter an innovative collaboration with offshore wind players, with a view towards upgrading, redesigning, and adapting existing facilities and decarbonizing port’s infrastructure. Within the project, a Nordic Offshore Wind Alliance will be developed acting as innovation advisory board for existing ports and industry players in the value chain reg. increasing requirements and expectations for the industry. In addition, a new multi-purpose super site concept for utilizing ports infrastructure and establish an optimal supply chain model that should best support future offshore wind ports and sites will be created. The project also hopes to inspire other regions around the world to learn best practices from leading Nordic offshore wind ports and their supply chains.

“We have been impressed with what the NOW Ports 2 project has achieved so far and trust it will be an important initiative for decarbonizing Nordic ports. The project is run by a strong consortium and can make a real impact on a Nordic level. We are very happy to announce NOW Ports 2 as the winner project of our Sea Meets Land mobility mission,” says Svein Berg, Managing Director, Nordic Innovation.

“Ports are a key players in the offshore wind supply chain because those are the focal point of enabling commissioning and installation as well as operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms. We need to get the Nordic ports ready for the expanding offshore wind industry, and we need more collaboration and innovation across the Nordic countries. This project is an important step in that direction,” says Glenda Napier, CEO, Energy Cluster Denmark.

“It is important that we in the industry share knowledge to create synergy effects that can benefit our customers, the environment and the consumer. Historically, it is a very closed industry, but in terms of the network and not least what many of the major stakeholders and companies are involved in, we have started to work more closely together. In Rønne, we have an ambition that we as a port will be central to the development of offshore wind in the Baltic Sea, and in that work a good network will always be good,” says Jeppe la Cour, Head of OWE, Port of Roenne A/S.

“The port of Trelleborg has proudly participated as the Swedish port in the project. The port has experience, since we were the base port, in an offshore construction project a few years ago. The project was managed in a very professional way, and all major players in the offshore construction business were involved.

We’ve learned a lot! We have received very good new contacts and we are very happy to be a partner in the next part of the project, “says Dag Samuelsson, Quality Manager, Trelleborgs Hamn AB.

“To ensure future competitiveness and high local activity level on the Port of Esbjerg and other Danish ports as well, we need to jointly bring words to what is expected of a pre-assembly offshore wind port sites in the future – and that is exactly what we have been doing with the project NOW Ports, and the result of this innovative process is highly useful,” says Niels G. Langerhuus, Chief Executive Officer, HYTOR A/S.