Abstract
The Insurance Subcommittee was founded as part of the Floating Offshore Wind Committee (FOWC) under the auspices of the World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO). Members who have decided to join the Insurance Subcommittee represent all sectors in the Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) industry, ranging from major international developers, investors and contractors to research & development companies, manufacturers, consultants, brokers and insurers.
Considering the core business and scale of individual members of the Committee, which is truly manifold, it is inevitable that so is the risk perception and readiness and ability to cope with the risk´s eventual manifestation. Considering further the direct competition between certain members, it is understandable that there is no single view or recommendation that all members would commonly pursue with respect to the development of floating offshore wind technology. There is, however, a common factor unifying the industry and shared by all members, which is the wish to help accelerate the deployment of commercial scale floating offshore wind.
For the acceleration of the new technology deployment, investment is a prerequisite. It is therefore necessary to gain trust of investors and financiers to enable the projects to move from a demonstrator to a commercial scale. Insurance is the security on which both Investors and Lenders rely when making their investment decision and which makes investment possible. The Insurance Subcommittee has therefore set as its goal to look into the parameters of floating offshore wind which could help the technology secure the level of insurance coverage Investors and Lenders would expect to receive, in analogy with the well-defined expectation arising out of their experience with bottom-fixed offshore wind, a sector in which they have massively invested over the past 10 – 15 years.
The premise initially set by the Insurance Subcommittee was to look for analogies with bottom-fixed offshore wind – which has enjoyed a significantly high level of insurance protection – to ultimately identify the major differences and consider how these could be evaluated, mitigated and presented to the insurance industry with the aim of qualifying for a comparable insurance coverage.
Major differences have been identified in the risk perception of moorings, dynamic cables and repair and maintenance concepts. Turbines, including different floating platform concepts, have on the other hand not been perceived as a major obstacle to achieving an enhanced level of insurability. With respect to the latter, it was nevertheless considered of high importance to have the turbine and floating platform design integrity independently reviewed and evaluated. Special thanks go to the international certification body Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and the renowned Hamburg-based engineering bureau Jörss-Blunck-Ordemann (JBO) for their excellent contribution enabling us to provide insurers with a high level of transparency in this area.
Alongside the Insurance Subcommittee, two other subcommittees were founded: the Moorings Subcommittee and the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Subcommittee. In addition to their individual achievements, both groups represent a great contribution to the work of the Insurance Subcommittee. The Moorings Subcommittee is focusing on recent developments in station-keeping systems while the O&M Subcommittee is analyzing different floating offshore wind maintenance and repair concepts, both on-site and tow-to-port. The three Subcommittees mutually foster the evolution of a “floating offshore wind dialogue” in that the outcomes of the discussions and the development of the floating offshore wind know how in the technical subcommittees are gradually transmitted to the Insurance Subcommittee which intends to formulate the latest stage of development and available concepts into risk perception alternatives to be presented to the insurance industry.