Drone Scandal Exposes Wind Energy’s China Crisis

Chinese-made drones disguised as wind turbine parts were
intercepted in Italy, sparking debate on China's role in the global
wind energy market. Allen, Phil, and Joel explore how European
manufacturers like Vestas and Siemens Gamesa can compete against
subsidized Chinese firms such as Goldwind and Mingyang. Do EU
protectionist policies address China's growing influence in
renewable energy? In other news, Statkraft has reduced its target
for renewables, the UK has lifted their onshore wind ban, Archer is
moving into the offshore wind industry, and Louisiana is installing
their first wind turbine. Visit AMI's website to book a spot at the
Wind Turbine Blades conference! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News,
our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode
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https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall,
and I'll be bringing you this week's top stories in the wind energy
sector. We start with a significant announcement from Statkraft,
the Norwegian energy giant. The company has revealed plans to
reduce its target for building solar PV, battery energy storage
systems and wind farms from 2026 onwards. Statkraft is adjusting
its development rate for solar, battery and onshore wind from two
and a half to three gigawatts to two and a half gigawatts. Even
more notably, their offshore wind targets have been cut from 10
gigawatts to 68 gigawatts by 2040. This shift comes as Statcraft
aims to prioritize investments in its home country of Norway. The
company cites challenging market conditions for the entire
renewable energy industry as a reason for this strategic
adjustment. Despite these reductions, Stackraft remains committed
to expanding its hydropower capabilities with plans to initiate at
least five major capacity upgrade projects in Norway by 2030.
Moving to England, the de facto ban on onshore wind development has
been lifted with immediate effect. This decision is part of a
broader commitment to double the capacity of onshore wind in
Britain by 2030. and boost energy independence. The policy change
places onshore wind on equal footing with other energy development
in the National Planning Policy Framework. This move is expected to
significantly accelerate the growth of onshore wind in England. The
government has also announced plans to streamline the planning
process for large onshore wind proposals by potentially
incorporating them in the nationally significant infrastructure
project regime. This could lead to faster determinations on
planning applications for these projects. In corporate news,
oilfield services firm Archer has made a strategic move into the
floating offshore wind sector. For The company has fully acquired
Moreld Ocean Wind, a Norwegian floating offshore wind solutions
provider. This acquisition includes a minority stake in Osergy. U.
S. French technology company. Morelde Ocean Wind specializes in
project management and engineering for the fabrication and assembly
of floating wind structures. With a team of about 30 engineers
based in Norway, Morelde Ocean Wind is currently engaged in various
studies and engineering contracts for some of the world's largest
energy companies. This acquisition positions Archer to capitalize
on the growing floating offshore wind market and support its energy
customers ambitions in the energy transition. Exciting developments
are also happening in Louisiana, where the state's first wind
turbine has arrived at Avondale Global Gateway. After a
transatlantic journey from Ireland, the onshore turbine is now
being prepared for installation at the Port Fortran Coastal
Wetlands Park. The project led by Gulf Wind Technology marks a
crucial step towards realizing the full technical and economic
potential for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico. The arrival of
this turbine not only demonstrates Louisiana's readiness to support
offshore wind, but it also showcases the state's pre built
infrastructure that could easily become part of the offshore wind
supply chain. Lastly, in an unusual turn of events, Italian
authorities have seized Chinese made wing long drones off the coast
of southern Italy. These drones, apparently headed to Libya, were
disguised as wind turbine parts in an attempt to evade the United
Nations arms embargo on Libya. The disassembled drones were found
in crates marked as containing parts for wind turbines.
Highlighting the complex geopolitical issues that can intersect the
wind energy sector. Mark your calendars for AMI's Wind Turbine
Blades Conference happening October 2nd and 3rd in historic Boston,
Massachusetts. This two day event, which is similar to the well
established edition in Europe, will bring together the whole blade
value chain to examine market outlook, innovations in blade
materials, design, manufacturing, testing, and lifecycle
management, with a special focus on the North American market. Gain
insights from experts from Vestas, Nordex, TPI, and DNV, along with
scientists and engineers from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plan your trip to
Boston this fall by visiting the link in the show notes or just
Google 2024 Blades Boston. That's this week's top energy news
stories. Now let's welcome our co hosts, CEO and founder of
IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of Weather
Guard, Joel Saxum. As I talked about at the top of the program, I
think made a real critical mistake recently over in Italy, where
they were trying to, from what it looks like, ship like a UAV, a
big drone, sized, a big airplane, basically over to Libya through
Italy, and they marked the drone components with the wind turbine
language. So this is a wind turbine access. This is a wind turbine
component. And they also put some wind turbine blade sections into
these containers also. So it was a mixed bag of once you open these
shipping containers. This is a huge problem that with all,
everything is happening on the wind front with China and the
Europeans where right now Germany is doing an investigation and the
EU is doing an investigation into China, wind turbines coming into
the European Union. Once. This was found out, I don't know how the
EU just doesn't heavily penalize China and prohibits them from
entering the EU market. And I would see the United States doing
something similar. Joel Saxum: I think one thing to note here too,
and we're talking drones now, we talked about, yeah, this is a UAV.
This is, this thing is akin to what the United States has in the MQ
9 Reaper. Like it's a long duration, like you can put surface to
air missile or air, or I guess it wouldn't be surface to air. It'd
be air to surface, air to ground missiles on this thing. And
they've been used. These drones have been regularly used in that
conflict within the Libyan, with the Libyan government. So the
Libyan government likes these things. They've been trying to get
their hands on them as many of as possible. So I can see some
spinning going on here about who's responsible. How did they get
them? Is the Libyan government actually trying to import them or is
the Chinese sending them to them? But the biggest thing here is I
haven't heard anything about it in the Western news. Like I've seen
it pop up on a couple of websites and stuff. And I've looked at the
pictures and went through, like what you're on websites like.
Thewarzone. com and stuff like that, and you're like, okay, you can
see this it's here, but I haven't heard anything from anybody in
our government, I haven't heard anything from anybody in European
government talk about this, or what the ramifications could be.
Allen Hall: Phil, are they going to be allowed to say anything? If
I'm the EU right now, I'm probably saying nothing, and I'm looking
through more shipping containers that have come from China. Philip
Totaro: Yeah, which, it begs the question, why was this going
through Italy in the first place? Like, why, if you're trying to
get something from China to Libya, can't you just, there's ways to
just deliver it that don't involve Italy, particularly where
there's an ongoing, investigation into amongst other things,
Chinese made, wind technology, solar technology, battery
technology, etc. That is, is already putting quite a big spotlight
on the Chinese and their manufacturing practices and their export
practices in the first place. Nothing leaves China without some
kind of government rubber stamp. So unless somebody was doing
something on the sly, I'm not even sure how these got out of China
like this in the first place. And for it to be packaged up and for
them to be pretending that it's wind turbines Is curious, very
curious. Joel Saxum: That's the that's probably one of the worst
things you could try to hide it as. Philip Totaro: So that's what
I'm saying. If you're trying to sneak something into Libya, just do
that. I'm not trying to encourage espionage here. I'm just pointing
out, like, why would you send it through Italy in the first place?
It doesn't make any sense. Allen Hall: Do you think the Italians
knew that was coming or that they had indications that this had
happened? Obviously. The U. S. military and the European Union is
monitoring what's happening in Libya, so if they saw drones appear
over there, they must have thought they're coming from somewhere,
they must be shipping them there, I wonder where they get shipping
them through and figure,