Following the recent news that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of India (MNRE) and Denmark’s Ministry for Energy, Utilities, and Climate have signed a cooperation agreement in the field of renewable energy with a special focus on offshore wind,

Ankit Mathur, Practice Head of Power at GlobalData, offers some valuable insights:

“As a pioneer in wind energy, Denmark currently sources more than 51% of the total electricity generation from wind. The agreement includes building technical capacity to manage offshore wind projects, and measures to develop a sustained and highly efficient wind industry, both onshore and offshore, in India. The measures will ensure processes that will improve the quality of wind turbines and components; certification requirements; forecasting and scheduling of offshore wind projects.

“The union cabinet of India also talked about setting-up of an Indo-Danish Centre of Excellence for renewable energy in India as part of the cooperation agreement. The center of excellence, besides working on renewable energy resource assessment, will also focus on hybridization of wind, solar, hydro and storage technologies, testing and R&D, and skill development.

“India has set a very ambitious target of having 5 gigawatt (GW) of operating offshore wind capacity by 2022 and as much as 30GW by 2030. An expression of interest was issued in April 2018 for the country’s inaugural offshore wind park near Gujarat, which attracted 35 responses from both domestic and international companies and consortia.

“Till last year, there has been a muted activity and the progress towards developing the Indian offshore wind industry was dismal. However, the Indian government has finally set the ball rolling and has gathered the required steam to drive the development momentum. MNRE has planned to launch the first ever 1GW offshore wind tender for Gujarat later this year, which, if fruitful can fuel India’s ambitious target of successfully foraying into Offshore wind.”