November 1, 2019, by Adrijana Buljan

Brazil, India, Morocco, the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Vietnam have a total technical offshore wind potential of approximately 3.1 terawatts, according to a report published by World Bank on 1 October 2019.

The report Going Global: Expanding Offshore Wind to Emerging Markets identifies 1TW of fixed-bottom offshore wind and almost 2.1TW of floating wind capacity across the eight countries.

“Fixed foundations represent the bulk of the opportunity in India, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. Other countries such as the Philippines and South Africa will require floating foundations, for which commercial scale is currently a barrier to deployment. Brazil, Morocco, and Vietnam can benefit from both technologies,” the report states.

While emerging markets have abundant offshore wind resources and the demand for new cost-competitive electricity sources and renewable energy, they are still witnessing significant barriers to offshore wind investment, according to the report. Nevertheless, they have the advantage of fast-tracking their offshore wind development based on the lessons learned by more developed offshore wind markets.

In March, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched a new World Bank Group (WBG) initiative to support the inclusion of offshore wind into the energy sector policies and strategies of WBG client countries, and the technical work needed to build a pipeline of bankable projects.

The report released in October 2019 is the first in a series of planned knowledge products to be published by ESMAP.