Digitalization of the Offshore Wind Sectors Supply Chain

Climate change has prompted a consensus change to approaches used in electricity generation globally from fossil fuel to sustainable energy sources. In lieu of this, a target was set by International Renewable Energy Agency (IRNEA) in conjunction with Global wind energy council (GWEC), to produce 380 GW of energy from offshore wind in 2030 and 2500 GW in 2050. Today only 63.2GW is produced by offshore wind farms globally. Meeting the set target by 2050 requires taking measures that will enhance greater efficiency.

Digitalizing the offshore wind supply chain is one measure that will encourage greater collaboration amongst supply chain participants which will lead to reduced costs of electricity generation, leading to increased sector investment. This paper is aimed at identifying the current digital maturity of the offshore wind supply chain based on a digital maturity model by Agca et al. (2022).

The objective is to evaluate the rate of deployment of digital technologies, measure the current level of digital maturity and suggest suitable digitalization technologies that can be deployed to enable the supply chain to reach its highest level of maturity. The survey was quantitative in nature using structured questionnaire constituting 93 respondents from 30 countries. The data fetched from across supply chain practitioners in the offshore wind sector was analysed using relative importance index and statistical analysis.

The result revealed the offshore wind supply chain is at developing stage (stage 2) of digital maturity based on digital maturity model by Agca et al. (2022). This research also proposes that although some digital technologies have been fully integrated into the offshore wind supply chain, several technologies are not used to their full potential.