On March 21, the Basque Energy Cluster Association (ACE by its Spanish acronym), in collaboration with the Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE by its Spanish acronym), organised a side event on the opportunities in the Spanish offshore wind market and the abilities of Spanish industry in relation to the floating offshore wind sector, as part of WindEurope Bilbao 2024. The event was attended by around one hundred international representatives from the sector.

Spain is aiming to produce 3 GW of floating offshore wind power by 2030. The involvement of the local value chain will be key to achieving this milestone. In this context, after the welcome by José Ignacio Hormaeche, managing director of ACE, the event began with an introduction on the general state of play in the sector by Juan Virgilio Marquez, general manager of AEE.

Three key clusters took part in the first session on deploying offshore wind power in Spain. Representing the Basque Country, Marcos Suárez, head of wind energy at ACE, described the capabilities pooled under the Floating Wind Basque Country brand. Representatives from Supercluster Atlantic Wind (a combination of the regions of Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia) and the Canary Islands Maritime Cluster also took part. These three regions were identified as strategic in the AEE's “White Paper on the Offshore Wind Industry in Spain”.

During the second session, six platform technology developers who were supported by the Renmarinas Demo programme –Saitec Offshore, Hive Wind (joint venture between Sener and Nervion Naval Offshore), X1Wind, EnerOcean (owned by the Basque engineering company Isati), Floating Power Plant and Acciona– gave a presentation on their capabilities. The last session featured three of the main entities in the offshore wind value chain in Spain, namely Ferrovial, Navantia Seanergies and Vicinay Marine.

The event was considered a success by the attendees and highlighted Spain's industrial capabilities in terms of tackling a large part of the activities required to deploy floating wind power over the next few decades.