WATCH: Van Oord christens record-breaking vessel

Boreas is desperately needed in an industry where there is a chronic shortage of such huge vessels – and the situation is being made worse with the rapid increase in size of wind turbines, requiring bigger and bigger vessels.

Christened by Rotterdam mayor Carola Schouten, Boreas, who was the Greek god of the Northern winds, is 175 metres long with a crane boasting a 155m-high boom that can lift more than 3,000 tonnes. She is capable of installing massive 20MW turbines, which are about the same height as the Eiffel Tower.

The vessel has already been booked for her first assignment, the offshore wind farm joint venture between RWE and Norges Bank Management in the German North Sea. Van Oord will be tasked with installing 104 extended monopiles and scour protection at the site, which has a projected generation capacity of 1.6GW.

Van Oord says Boreas is the first vessel of its kind to be equipped with dualk-fuel methanol engines, which it says will reduce its carbon footprint by 78%. She is also equipped with a battery pack of more than 6,000kWh and Selective Catalytic Reduction technology.

”The Boreas is the largest investment in our company’s history, a testament to our ambition to remain a frontrunner in offshore wind, accelerate the energy transition and perform our work responsibly,” said Govert van Oord, CEO. “We lead our industry in adopting more sustainable green marine fuels; now, with the Boreas being able to operate on methanol, we have added a new chapter to our net-zero emissions journey.”

The industry has not been plain sailing for Van Oord.

In April, Govert van Oord admitted struggles in the sector, with net results falling ‘short of expectations’. 

He also said Chinese advances in building increasingly bigger turbines was a problem, and said the company had joined a whole value chain that was calling for stnadardisation.