Record Attendance at Møteforum

More than 60 companies joined our Møteforum to learn more about offshore wind possibilities and establish new connections in more than 200 meetings.

– After having participated annually at this speed-dating event, I was a curious about how it would work in a digital setting, says Richard Nilsen from Mekasense.

– I have to say that after having attended several webinars recently where the technique has failed a bit, it was nice to see how well the technical aspect worked at this event, Nilsen continues.

– During the plenary sessions, I was not worried about the concept, while I was more unsure about the many one-on-one meeting, so it was nice to see how effective the speed-dating was and for me it worked almost better than moving from table to table as we usually do. My meetings resulted in three specific follow-ups and we are very pleased with that. Thus, I would like to pay tribute to GCE Ocean Technology who have managed to lift this important event up in the digital cloud showing that it is possible to arrange arenas to meet even though we are currently somewhat prevented from meeting physically, Nilsen concludes.

Hugh Opportunities for the Norwegian Supplier Industry

Beate Myking, Senior Vice President for New Energy Solutions in Equinor gave an interesting plenary presentation about how she views the role and opportunities for Norwegian suppliers within offshore wind in the coming years.

On his first day as CEO of Equinor, Anders Opedal announced that Equinor will be climate neutral within 2050 and Myking supported that statement by emphasizing how the world needs offshore wind at large scale to meet the climate targets.

The capacity needs to increase and Equinor will work to ensures access to new areas to accelerate growth for offshore wind. 80% of the marked will require floating solutions according to Myking.

Myking believes that the cost of offshore wind, will come down with an increasing volume. Standardisation, industrialisation and digitalisation are key to achieving this, and Norway can take a leading position.

Hywind Tampen_Gullfaks. Photo by ©Equinor

Norwegian Technology Muscles

Equinor has a strong platform to grow from with significant experience about how to solve the challenges ahead. They view the East Coast of the United States to represents huge possibilities, they also see the Baltic Sea and Asia as areas of high interest. They are currently measuring the wind potential in South Korea.

Myking believes that Norwegian suppliers have a great chance to capitalise in the offshore wind market as we have the knowledge, robustness, offshore expertise and know-how from decades within the oil and gas industry.

Need to Act Now

Members from the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster were invited to join this year’s Møteforum, which was arranged online. Gunnar Birkeland CEO Unitech Energy Group and Head of the Board in Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster, presented their cluster and how Unitech Offshore have used their subsea experience to enter the offshore wind marked.

Birkeland also gave an example on how they took the technology from fjord crossing to develop new subsea cables.

– We as a company have great value and realize more projects by being member in more than one cluster, said Birkeland.

He believes Norway has a unique location and topography for the assembling of wind turbines, provided we are able to build an infrastructure based on a home market. His ambition for Norway is 30% of the European marked, and to reach this we need to act now.

Birkeland underlined the benefit of having Equinor as a frontrunner with Hywind demo. Myking, on her side, was very pleased to see that

Hywind demo had gotten a new “life” for the industry as part of the Sustainable Energy Norwegian Catapult Center.

Both Gunnar Birkeland and Beate Myking was pleased with the Norwegian governments active support towards offshore wind and the opening of Norwegian areas for offshore wind.