Market strategies for offshore wind in Europe: A development and diffusion perspective

Offshore wind will contribute to the decarbonization of European power systems, but is currently costlier than many other generation technologies. We assess the adequacy of market strategies available to private actors developing offshore wind farms in Europe, by employing the development and diffusion pattern model. The model includes two earlier phases in addition to the large-scale deployment phase of other diffusion models: the innovation and the market adaptation phases. During its development and diffusion offshore wind moved from experimentation to a dominant design (monopile foundations and a permanent magnet generator). Simultaneously, wind farms shifted from an experimental to a commercial purpose and grew from 10 to 316MW on average. The turbine and wind farm development markets kept a high concentration throughout all phases. Also, the wind farm life cycle and supply chain became more integrated and drew less from the onshore wind and oil & gas sectors.

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