It’s a long-established truism that technology in the infrastructure space leaps from nascent to established in the blink of an eye… and that stands true in the case of offshore wind.

In this latest episode of IJGlobal’s podcast service – Infra Dig – content director Angus Leslie Melville talks to Dr Sherif Gebaly, investment director for renewables and decommissioning at investment advisory firm Arcadis, about this challenging sector.

In an episode that runs for 30 minutes, Sherif takes the listener through a 360 of the offshore wind industry, with discussion ranging from fixed foundation… all the way to floating.

You can access this latest Infra Dig episode on Apple Podcasts and through Amazon Podcasts. It is also hosted across a slew of other platforms and is open access on all of them.

In a wide-ranging fireside chat, Sherif runs through who is doing what in European offshore wind, many of the challenges it faces through vessel hire and logistics lender comfort with the sector, lessons learned and a forward view of where the market is heading.

On the European market, Sherif says: “The European market – in reality – today is all about fixed-foundation, but floating is coming and there are a lot of lessons learned from fixed that we need to digest and reflect on so that we take a more educated step towards floating.”

As to lessons learned, Sherif adds: “Today you have a pipeline of offshore wind projects – fixed and floating – all over the UK in Round 4 and with ScotWind, you have the same in France, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

“It’s all about opportunity cost… which projects you think that today’s technology will enable the delivery of these projects on time. You will be able to start generation and revenue streams will come in on time – and what it will cost you to do this.”

Tune into this latest episode of Infra Dig to learn all about the offshore wind industry to arm you for debate on a subject that you thought you knew sufficiently well!