The UK Government has awarded funding to a Morek Engineering-led consortium to design a new class of low-carbon installation vessels for the floating offshore wind market.
The consortium – which includes Morek Engineering, Solis Marine Engineering, Tope Ocean, First Marine Solutions and Celtic Sea Power – won the funding through the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition.
This project is part of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 4, funded by the UK Department for Transport and delivered by Innovate UK. The competition round is part of the Department’s UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE) programme, a £206m ($261.7m) initiative focused on developing the technology necessary to decarbonise the UK domestic maritime sector.
The outline vessel design will be ready for engagement with classification societies to achieve approval in principle by early 2025.
“This will be a first-in-class low-carbon vessel designed specifically to meet the complex installation requirements of floating offshore wind farm moorings and foundations. As the next era of offshore wind development moves towards using floating foundations, unlocking deeper sites, and accessing stronger winds further from shore will involve mooring floating foundations to support the world’s largest offshore wind turbines, some the size of the Eiffel Tower,” Bob Colclough, managing director of Morek Engineering, said.
He added that the current offshore service fleet has limited capability and capacity and that the offshore construction market will need to reach a serial production level which is unprecedented in offshore industries.
“Greenhouse gas emissions from offshore wind farm operation and maintenance vessels constituted more than 3% of domestic shipping emissions in the UK in 2022. With ambitious targets to develop the UK’s offshore wind capacity from 14 GW in 2023 to 50 GW by 2050, this percentage share is likely to rise to well over 10% as this pipeline is realised through a ‘business-as-usual’, fossil fuel vessel scenario. So, it is vital to pioneer a new approach to offshore service vessels, to embrace Clean Maritime and Net Zero objectives,” Ian Godfrey, managing director of Tope Ocean, added.