AYOP BUSINESS CALL met Rabo Research

Zahra Janipour is an energy transition specialist at Rabobank where she leads research on offshore renewable energy, services and equipment including offshore wind energy. Before joining Rabobank, she worked as a researcher on different energy transition projects in academia. She has several years of work experience as environmental analyst in consultancies and HSE officer in oil and gas industry. She holds a PhD in industrial deep decarbonisation with the focus on socio-technical dynamics of the transition to Net-Zero in the energy-intensive industry.

Offshore wind energy is crucial to reach the net-zero emission targets and remains one of the main sources of renewable electricity. By the end of 2023, Europe has installed 34 GW (according to WindEurope report p. 29) offshore wind capacity that is expected to grow up to 128 GW by 2030 (p 43). However, there are a number of challenges and bottlenecks that the industry faces such as high inflation of raw materials and key components, high interest rate, slow permitting and supply chain shortage that need to be addressed to achieve the offshore wind targets.