For many in the underwater industry, the last 12 months can be best summed up as confusing. Shifts in energy policy coupled with the turmoil in the global offshore wind markets have led to uncertainty in the supply chain which can only thrive on certainty.
2023 has seen the industry go from no sanctioned projects to a raft of incoming projects such as Rosebank and the Jackdaw project.
It is fair to say 2023 has been a tough year for the wind turbine industry. After years of exceptional growth, accelerated technology innovation and declining costs, the sector was hit with multiple challenges sending ripples of delays and doubts.
700 offshore wind vessels - 12% of total traffic - came to the port in 2023.
A leading Scottish-based law firm has marked the publication of a ground-breaking guide to new energies and the creation of a collaborative group.
As Dr Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President, reiterated in his concluding remarks, “an agreement is only as good as its implementation. We are what we do, not what we say”.
As the North Sea energy sector transitions into a new era, there are a range of challenges and opportunities on the horizon.
The delivery of the energy transition will be one of the greatest engineering challenges and opportunities of our time. Failing to recruit, retain and attract the necessary capabilities and expertise into the industry will jeopardise the UK’s ability to meet its energy security and climate goals. Connected Competence must be part of that solution.
There is undoubtedly a worldwide transition towards renewable energy underway, with global additions of renewable power capacity expected to jump by a third this year.
A worrying aspect of the global energy transition now gathering pace is how impoverished countries with large oil and gas discoveries react to wealthy nation rhetoric telling them that they should kiss the chance of making $billions goodbye before they’ve even started harvesting the resource.
‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’, to coin Mike Tyson, and rolling with the punches is easier if you’re agile and prepared to change.
The holiday season is upon us, and while it's often considered ‘the most wonderful time of the year’, it can also be one of the most stressful and overwhelming for some, if not many.
I recognise that drive for technological disruption and challenging accepted constraints in HonuWorx, writes Steven Gray.
I spend a lot of time reading the international energy media. I also discuss a lot with people in the policy and engineering world overseas about what’s going on or what’s not going on, particularly in terms of technology development and manufacturing.
The announcement from PetroIneos that Scotland’s only oil refinery at Grangemouth will close by 2025 can, one hopes, be reversed and time bought.
Hydrogen can already be a profitable and competitive alternative to petrol and diesel fuels, at least in world energy capital Houston, researchers claim.
Solutions to some of these challenges are being developed and, in some cases, can be found in the smarter use of existing equipment and methodologies.
Innovation and new technology is central to a successful energy transition, but working out who bears the financial risk posed by largely untested tech can see proposed projects fail to get off the ground.
It is time developing countries take a page from the Willie Sutton play book and look to the oil industry for funding their energy transition – that’s where the money is.
If anyone was in any doubt that the lack of a coherent and long-term energy strategy is thwarting our net-zero ambitions, the events and news in recent months, have brought this into sharp focus.
The Labour leader is visiting the north-east today with a promise the region will be at the centre of a 'clean energy' future.
Several years ago, it seemed that some leading environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had started to concede UK Big Oil’s claim that a managed transition away from high- to low-carbon energy might be strategically more effective as a means of reaching Net Zero by 2050 than the slam-dunk kill demanded by Just Stop Oil.
One of the many sub-plots in the saga of two uncompleted Caledonian MacBrayne ferries at the Ferguson yard in Port Glasgow involves the proposed use of Liquefied Natural Gas to part-fuel them.
As an industry, we’ve made good progress in mental health support, but we need to do more. According to a study by the International SOS Foundation, which looked at the mental health vulnerabilities for remote and rotational workers, 40% of respondents experience suicidal thoughts while on duty.
No more public money should go into hydrogen for domestic heating because electrification is the only viable means of decarbonising heating and hot water in UK homes, writes Jenny Curtis, managing director of Vattenfall Heat UK.