UK firm Acteon has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Taiwan-based firm Wynnergy Marine to deliver offshore energy projects in the Taiwan region.
Acteon will provide the subsea services in terms of geophysical and geotechnical site investigations, offshore foundations and structural health monitoring, and this will include its Double Big Bubble Curtain technology, which minimises noise pollution around operations such as pile driving.
The MoU will support offshore wind in Taiwan, which in the past 10 years has seen enormous growth.
Beginning in 2015 with the 128MW fixed-bottom offshore wind project Formosa 1, owned by a conglomeration of Ørsted, JERA Nex, Swancor and Mitsui, Taiwan seems to have not looked back – since 2018 a total of 10GW has now been built or is in planning.
Of that, some 3GW is already operational, and just two of the projects in the planning stages, both very small at 50MW and 180MW, are floating wind.
The Taiwanese government has set out ambitious targets for the industry, including 13.1GW to be installed by 2030, which means another 10GW within four years. By 2050 its ‘net-zero pathway’ aims to have 40-55GW installed by 2050.
The government is taking carbon cutting seriously: it has also implemented a target of 40.2 million tons of carbon to be captured and stored either below the ground or the seabed by 2050.
