The future is floating: Renewables’ growing role in decarbonising oil & gas

It’s been an exciting week for both Equinor’s New Energy Solutions team (running our low carbon and renewables business) and our colleagues in Development & Production Norway (operating our oil and gas on the Norwegian Continental Shelf). At the risk of overt hubris, we might look back on this moment as a major milestone in the global energy transition.

The announcement (link) from Norway’s Enova organisation to support the world’s first offshore wind farm to power oil & gas installations with a 2.3bn NOK grant has been a long labour of love for many of us in Equinor (see Hywind story here). Just for context, Enova is a 100% Norwegian state-owned entity with the purpose to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, develop energy and climate technology innovation and strengthen security of supply. 

Equinor and our partners (ExxonMobil, Petoro, Vår energi, DEA, Idemitsu and OMV) in the Gullfaks and Snorre oil and gas licenses have for some time been in a positive dialogue with the Norwegian authorities to investigate solutions for reducing CO2 emissions from the fields. Most CO2 emissions on an offshore platform are derived from natural gas-powered turbines which produce constant power to the platform’s operations and drilling.

After a great deal of concept engineering, the chosen solution is to install 11 floating offshore wind turbines, with a total capacity of 88 MW and combine this with the existing gas turbine generation capacity. We named the project ‘Hywind Tampen’. Hywind, as this is one of Equinor’s technology solutions within floating wind and Tampen as this is the name of the producing area in the Northern North Sea. When built, it will be the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm.

The CO2 reductions are around 200,000 tonnes/year, around 35% of the CO2 emissions from the existing turbines, and an important contributor to Equinor’s climate roadmap to significantly reduce Norwegian offshore CO2 emissions. The concept is to run the wind turbines as efficiently as possible for power production and enable the gas turbines to kick-in when wind power output drops. This is a unique technology, combining advanced power management systems between wind and gas turbines in an ‘island mode’ i.e. not linked to a grid.  

The project has high strategic value in that it could unlock further CO2 reductions in Norway towards other offshore platforms. It could also open a completely new market sector within offshore wind, namely towards major oil and gas installations across the world. Spreading this technology and making floating offshore wind even more competitive as a green power source with global potential is a strong driver for Enova and the Norwegian government.  

The business case is based on reducing exposure to CO2 and NOx taxes plus fuel saved, but without the support of Enova, we would not be able to able to achieve the project. Floating offshore wind remains an early stage technology and will require targeted financial support to enable continuous deployment and drive innovation and learning curve effects like those observed with traditional, bottom-fixed, offshore wind, which is a highly competitive power source. This is not dissimilar to the early days of solar and onshore wind, requiring a financial kick-start to become competitive. In many markets solar and wind are already the lowest cost new power source, outcompeting fossil fuels.

Our technology and operations will build upon Hywind Scotland, the world’s first floating offshore wind farm, operated by Equinor with our excellent partner Masdar. Equinor as operator of Snorre and Gullfaks will seek operational synergies with our offshore marine fleet and digital operations centre in Norway.

There remains a lot still to be done to pull the whole concept together to produce power by 2022. Coexistence with other industries (fishing, shipping and new oil & gas exploration rounds) is essential to open future offshore wind areas in Norway. In the meantime, we hope to see new, major developments where renewable technology coupled with oil & gas operations leads to further reductions in greenhouse gases. This will be an essential part of the energy transition in the future and Hywind Tampen looks to be a major milestone on that journey.