Global offshore wind industry poised to miss big targets as obstacles mount | U.S. & World [Video]

By Nichola Groom and Nina Chestney

(Reuters) – After a year of canceled projects, broken turbines, and abandoned lease sales, the global offshore wind industry no longer has much chance to hit the lofty targets set by governments in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, marking a setback for efforts to fight climate change.

The technology forms a big part of government strategies to advance renewable energy and decarbonize the global power industry because it can generate vast amounts of electricity near densely populated coastal regions. Missing targets by a wide margin will leave a gap that could be hard to fill.

Reuters spoke to 12 offshore wind companies, industry researchers, trade associations, and government officials in six countries to come up with a global picture of the state of the industry and its outlook, and found soaring costs, project delays and limited supply chain investment were hobbling installations.

“We’re pretty far away from these targets,” Soren …