The energy transition financial advisors

Blog post

Is FER 2 the beginning of the offshore wind era in Italy?

Italy, one of the most promising markets for floating offshore wind We were recently asked by a client to indicate which countries we think could build commercial size floating offshore wind projects by 2030. They looked very surprised when we mentioned Italy in our very short list, together with the UK and Korea (and optimistically Taiwan). In recent years, offshore wind has been a central topic of discussion in Italy, with the arrival of a long-awaited government decree and a large number of projects under development. The industry is now more vibrant than ever. Italy is currently considered the third most promising market for floating offshore wind development in the world.[1] What does this mean for a country that at the moment has only one operational fixed bottom offshore wind farm installed, for a total of 30 MW? What is actually required to unlock this potential? Let’s start by digging into the numbers. Although the offshore wind target that the Italian government set in the latest NECP[2] was 2.1 GW by 2030, both market research and industry publications have adopted a much more bullish view. According to a number of industry studies[3], Italy has the potential to install 11 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040 and to reach at least 20 GW of installed capacity by 2050. Achieving this growth has the potential to unlock a cumulative value of ~EUR 57 bn and to create approximately 27,000 new jobs between 2030 and 2050.