They’ve been operating for decades in northern oceans, and now offshore windfarms are finally on the horizon for Australia.

It’s a moment geotechnical engineering specialist Professor Britta Bienen from UWA’s Oceans Graduate School has been working towards, solving the challenges of fixing turbines to seabeds in Australian waters.

“I’ve been working on offshore wind for a decade now and always looking overseas — to the North Sea to other areas of the world — now, finally, there’s an opportunity for us to provide our expertise within Australia, so that is hugely exciting,” she said.

Still without a single offshore windfarm, Australia might be a generation behind Denmark where the industry was first established in 1991, but this has benefits as we can take advantage of the learning curve to date, to be at the forefront of the new clean energy future.

Professor Britta Bienen

There has been strong interest in feasibility licence applications in declared areas over east, with Victoria’s Gippsland region likely to see the first turbines in Australian waters. At the Global Wind Energy Council summit in Melbourne in August, Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy of Australia, announced an area in Western Australia to be proposed for consultation in November.

Professor Bienen’s work has helped lay the foundation for the technology to be used — in one of the parts of the world best suited to meet its potential.

“Offshore wind is one of the technologies that can be readily rolled out and Australia, the southern half of Australia in particular, is super blessed with immense resources when it comes to particularly strong and steady winds,” she said.

But these large energy infrastructure projects have lead times for planning, preparation, and rigorous approvals that could take six to 10 years.

“Offshore wind is abundant, efficient and can complement onshore and solar, but if we want that to be part of our energy mix going forward, we need to action this now,” Professor Bienen warned.

As with any new market, one of the challenges to getting offshore turbines up and running is bringing the public on board with a technology unfamiliar to many.

Professor Bienen has also been making inroads on that front — bringing a public engagement initiative to our shores, that began as a concept her colleague developed in Belgium during COVID lockdowns.

It’s called OffshoreWind4Kids — a hands-on activity that has taken the world by storm.

“It’s a simplified smaller-scale turbine, and the substructures replicate the different concepts of how you put the structures offshore,” she said.

“We invite families to come down to the river — so in gentle offshore conditions — and they build the turbine, install it, see how it works and get to ask any questions they have.”

It’s one step in introducing Australians to a new form of energy that could be an important part of the country’s future — beyond powering residential and industrial infrastructure.

“Some people are looking at exporting clean energy, so that might be on the horizon as well,” Professor Bienen explained.

“It could also open up green manufacturing opportunities. For example, the European Union will soon want to know how much CO2 is embodied in steel so if you have cheap, reliable green energy there’s huge potential for Australia to use that.”

But, for now, there’s more than enough work to be done. “It’s really exciting to be part of the industry globally and now hopefully soon being able to apply this here,” she said.

“These are complex multi-disciplinary projects and there is amazing innovation that’s coming from everywhere, so the field is constantly evolving.

“It's part of why I love my job.”

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