January 22, 2024

Exciting progress within research on nature and offshore wind

The State Secretary of Energy Astrid Bergmål opened the research conference Deep Wind.

by Arne Vatnøy

Communication manager

A key takeaway from the research conference Deep Wind in Trondheim is that new insight is needed to solve challenges in floating offshore wind. Cost reduction and environmental impact on offshore wind are topics high on the global academic agenda.

The Deep Wind conference gathered more that 300 researchers from across Europe and beyond. It aims to present the best ongoing research and innovation related to offshore wind farms.

-The topic of environmental impact from offshore wind farms is a hot potato in the public debate. Undoubtfully, this is where we experience a lot of misinformation, says Chris Harman, Innovation Manager in Norwegian Offshore Wind, who participated at the conference.

At this year´s Deep Wind, participants were presented with interesting results, covering modelling of interactions of birds and bird migrations, and noise effects.

-It was particularly intriguing to see these findings not just on marine mammals, but also on plankton communities! Initial baseline results from microplastic studies around Hywind Scotland were also presented, comments Harman.

There were more than 200 presentations during the conference. Read more about the programme here.

EU funding is a driving force for innovation

Norwegian Offshore Wind in cooperation with Innovation Norway, FME Northwind and EERA JP wind, organised a workshop on EU funding opportunities at this year´s conference in Trondheim.

The workshop was divided into two sessions where NOW presented the 3 different Horizon Europe calls and the pilot call in EUs Innovation Fund. Second session the specific calls: HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-02-09, HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-02-08, HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-02-04 and INNOVFUND-2023-NZT-PILOTS, where discussed with the objective to connect the stakeholders and establish consortiums. More than 70 people attended the presentations and 40 stayed for workshop sessions.

-EU is a driving force for innovation in offshore wind, and it is important that the industry knows about the opportunities provided, and the EERA conference is a good opportunity for the industry to meet leading RDI representatives, says Tor Arne Johnsen, EU advisor in Norwegian Offshore Wind.