STORY / PUBLIC SOURCE RECORD
Around the world with Team Norway: seizing the day in the North Sea Basin
- Published 10 May 2024; updated 30 September 2026; estimated reading time 3 minutes. Innovation Norway’s Erik Rindvoll says the North Sea Basin is Norway’s home market for offshore wind and describes Norway as moving from a minor role since the 1990s toward a larger one. Norway launched an offshore-wind export initiative in 2022 and awarded its first offshore production area, Sørlige Nordsjø II, in April 2024.
- The article characterises the basin as a mature, competitive bottom-fixed market with most major global developers and two-thirds of major OEMs active. It says Norway is a latecomer but still offers entry opportunities, with domestic capabilities in marine operations, cables, foundations, geosurvey, SCADA, sensors, subsea systems and substations.
- Floating wind is expanding for deeper waters. The article calls Norway a pioneer and cites Hywind Scotland as the first floating wind farm and Hywind Tampen as the largest at the time of publication. Norway’s Marine Energy Test Centre (METCentre) is presented as the North Sea’s floating-turbine testing centre and the site where the first floating turbine was built and tested. The article says costs must fall for floating wind to become viable and points to innovation and broader market access as needs.
- It describes the 24 April 2023 Ostend Declaration, signed by Norway, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK, as an agreement to increase North Sea offshore-wind electricity while protecting the marine environment. Norway’s targets cited are at least 3 GW installed by 2030, including 1.5 GW floating, and areas for 30 GW production by 2040. Broader regional aims cited: 120 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050.
- Contact: Erik Rindvoll, Special Advisor for Offshore Wind in Denmark at Innovation Norway, erik.rindvoll@innovationnorway.no; he also leads Innovation Norway’s North Sea Basin high-potential-opportunity programme.
- The page’s extensive, non-exhaustive Norwegian-player directory groups: developers (Deep Wind Offshore, Equinor, Statkraft); engineering (Kongstein, Moreld Apply, Multiconsult); geosurvey (GeoProvider, NGI, Shearwater, TGS); foundations (Aker Solutions); subsea (Deep Ocean, 4Subsea, Reach Subsea, Saga Subsea); substations/converters (Aibel); cables (Nexans, Prysmian Norway, Wirescan); operations/maintenance (Axess, Cranemaster, Energy Innovation, IKM, NorSea); communications (Tampnet); SCADA (Goodtech, Kongsberg, Origo Solutions, Shoreline); sensors (ScanSense); surveillance (Kongsberg Norcontrol, Spoor); logistics (Bring); vessels (DOF, Fred. Olsen Windcarrier, Eidesvik, Edda Wind, Havfram, Integrated Wind Solutions, Seaway7, Solstad Offshore); ship design/building (LMG Marin, Skipsteknisk, VARD, Ugland, Ulstein, Umoe); and potentially disruptive technology (Nekkar, Odfjell Oceanwind, Wind Catching, Windsteel Technologies, World Wide Wind). Related examples include GeoProvider, Cranemaster and 4Subsea. Related industries: Energy and Offshore wind.