Everything you need to know about offshore wind energy in SA

Offshore wind energy refers to energy generation via wind turbines that are mounted on structures off the coast of a state in the ocean (thus, “offshore”).

Offshore wind energy has become an attractive energy generation prospect in recent years since its first appearance along Denmark’s shores in the 1990s. Similarly to onshore wind projects, installations consist of wind turbines generating electricity through the capture of the kinetic energy that wind creates through the rotation of turbine blades. Offshore turbine blades are often much larger than onshore blades, with one blade almost as long as a rugby field, and massive farms of these giants can be found mostly in the North Sea.

This kinetic energy is subsequently converted into mechanical energy as the captured wind spins the internal rotors and hub, and drives an electric generator that produces electrical currents. This is the same process that occurs in onshore wind installations. However, this is where the processes diverge.

Offshore wind turbines are often mounted onto a specialised platform structure off the coast of the mainland, which supports the turbine. These platforms are categorised depending on the connection to the seabed, but the most common are either fixed-bottom structures for shallower waters or floating structures for deeper waters. The energy generated must be transported from its structure via specialised underwater export cables to the onshore landing station, and then onward either to be fed into the national grid or into storage.

Offshore energy generation presents distinct advantages over other renewable energy forms. Compared to onshore wind farms, offshore installations along coastlines tend to be faster and stronger. Their location in a water body often means that wind can be more easily captured, since there tend to be fewer physical obstacles for the wind flow than on land. This means their energy yield potential is often greater than for onshore installations — an attractive prospect for potential producers.

SA’s offshore wind project potential

South Africa is an ideal state for offshore wind generation due to its climate and high wind speeds. The country has some of the strongest and most consistent winds in the world, especially along the West Coast. South Africa has a vast shoreline totalling 3,000km, reaching up to Namibia on its west coast to Mozambique on its eastern coast.

There is, however, currently only one active offshore wind project along the state’s coastline, the GenesisHexicon joint venture project on the Eastern Cape coast. Onshore wind still dominates. Onshore wind generation is a much more developed industry, and thus its longer history and sectoral domination have meant more regulation, and even state support and incentivisation.

SA’s offshore wind policy

Regulation for wind energy generation activity has been limited to onshore projects. There is currently no dedicated regulatory framework for offshore wind. Operators and investors would thus need to consider a complex array of applicable permits and processes for an offshore wind project.

Procurement currently does not envisage offshore wind projects as permissible for the national renewable energy generation procurement programme. This exclusion of offshore wind projects from state renewable energy procurement programmes means offshore projects are not operating with the same level of state support. Investors would probably have to create their own ad hoc framework of operation, partially following the same process as an onshore project.

For instance, for the portion of the project that occurs on land, like the creation of a landing station which receives all the energy generated offshore, developers would be required to obtain the standard permissions — including environmental authorisation, community and affected stakeholder consultation, land use permissions and grid connection approvals — that any other energy-generating project would.

However, since it operates simultaneously on land and in the ocean, an offshore wind energy generation developer would need to have an additional compliance layer for operations in the ocean.

Operating a turbine off the coast means disrupting existing shipping routes, marine radar communications and emergency response operations. Developers would thus need to seek commercial activity permissions from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, as well as local municipalities, for any activity along the coast.

The environmental authorisation would also probably be rigorous and require consultation processes with many affected parties, considering that South Africa’s oceans are the sites not only of some of the world’s most unique marine wildlife in designated marine protected areas, but the coastline is vital to the cultural and spiritual practices of many communities.

Projects must be aligned with national marine spatial planning in their undersea cable and substation planning. Developers would also need to obtain explicit approval for undersea cable installation, permission for wind turbine erection and approval for grid connectivity. The nascent and patchwork regulatory landscape is likely to deter potential investors.

The current appetite for it in South Africa

Although there is recognised potential along its coasts, there is not currently a big appetite for offshore energy generation in South Africa from industry.

The relative complexity of an offshore wind project makes it twice as expensive as an onshore wind project. Expensive equipment and specialised knowledge mean more overhead costs for an energy project, more liability and risk, and more highly educated and costly employees.

There are a handful of original equipment manufacturers and suppliers that dominate the supply chain globally, giving them huge pricing power. The GenesisHexicon project alone is estimated to be worth billions of rands in investment. South Africa currently has a well-developed and advanced onshore wind energy sector, which is much more cost-competitive and less complex.

Onshore wind has become commercially competitive, thanks to well-established supply chains, reliable suppliers, and a highly educated local workforce ready to drive the sector forward.

Offshore projects in South Africa would be more complex and require outsourcing a lot of the crew, workers and specialists, which costs more.

Underdeveloped domestic value chains contribute to high overhead human resource costs and thus act as the main deterrent to a thriving offshore wind sector. It is unsurprising, then, that solar energy generation projects dominate the country’s renewable energy sector.

Onshore renewable energy projects like solar also have more established supply chains and even advantages in terms of their accessibility and operational ease. South Africa has large tracts of land and some of the highest levels of solar irradiation globally that make large-scale solar farms and onshore wind farms more ideal, cost-effective and accessible in comparison to countries with less land or sunshine that want to monopolise their shores for energy generation (eg, the Netherlands which has a coastline but a very small mass of collective national land and aims to heavily on offshore wind in future).

The lack of foresight, exclusion of offshore wind developers from the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, and the slow regulation configuration indicate there is not much appetite from the state. It’s likely that future offshore wind projects will be private partnerships of energy-generating projects selling directly to mining companies. These are all deterrents to foreign and domestic energy entrepreneurs considering offshore energy projects.

Given that the South African government has been in a process of energy diversification since the 1990s and, more recently, national energy transitioning and coal plant decommissioning, it raises the question of when these commitments on paper will translate to the sectoral support and regulatory framework needed to make them happen. DM