Abstract
A two-day workshop at Northeastern University in Boston on 18-19 March 2019 was designed to share information among practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers from France and the United States on the innovation potential of floating offshore wind energy technology and to discuss and identify the key issues that can lead to lower costs of energy and increased public acceptance. The workshop featured 120 participants from academia, industry and government with expertise in engineering, social science, economics, financing, public policy and regulation. The workshop was organized around four themes: (1) Demonstrations and innovations of floating technology, (2) Risk, regulation, and insurance of floating infrastructure, (3) Structuralgeotechnical interaction of moorings of floating systems, and (4) Legal, economic, and technological issues for multi-use offshore development. This report summarizes the content, layout, findings and conclusions of this workshop and is organized as follows. First, an introduction explains the vision for this workshop and provides context for the floating offshore wind energy industry globally and in France and the United States. Next, the narrative layout of the workshop, which consisted of three keynote presentations, five panel discussions, three poster sessions, a working breakout session on three topics, and a reception at the residence of the Consul General of France in Boston, is summarized. This is followed by a summary of the key ideas and findings and then by conclusions and next steps. Finally, several appendices are provided as documentation of relevant materials generated as part of this workshop.