Our confidence in the U.S. wind sector remains strong despite some offshore construction productivity issues.

As we move in to the second quarter of 2024, there are some positive signs of activity in the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic offshore wind segment. The first pre-commercial scale wind farm, South Fork, has completed the installation of all turbines, Vineyard is progressing, both Revolution Wind and Coastal Virginia will start offshore construction imminently and the construction of Sunrise Wind is queued up to commence after Revolution. Including the six turbines commissioned before 2021, these projects will take the total beyond 400 turbines and 5 GW of installed capacity.

Further, we anticipate that developers will take final investment decisions on ~8.5 GW of additional capacity before the year end.

However, we also note some potential project delays associated with offshore construction productivity. As a pre-commercial project, we anticipated that South Fork would struggle to deliver the productivity seen on a commercial scale wind farm, like Vineyard. But Vineyard construction is on hold now until the end of the third quarter of this year, with 15 monopiles remaining to be installed, 32 transition pieces, 52 turbines and array cables for six complete turbine array cables and three partial turbine arrays to complete. Construction vessel productivity to date has been below expectation, due to several reasons particular to the area. The monopile installation vessel booked for the project will be starting monopile installation at CVOW-C in May. The WTIV is due back on site around September. The array cable layer is currently busy on a project in the Middle East. A COD within 2024 seems to be a stretch target, given the amount of remaining work. Vessel productivity on the new projects starting construction needs to be bought in line with the norms seen in the European market if delays and vessel availability are not to become key challenges.

A further positive sign has been a technical clarification around IRA related tax credits available to developers, giving project developers better clarity and reducing risks when making investment decisions.

Our long-term project pipeline has now grown to ~$380 billion and close to 96 GW.