Anyone taking a cursory look at the mainstream media’s headlines might think the offshore wind industry was booming, but with WindEurope admitting recently that not a single final investment decision was made for an offshore windfarm in the whole of last year, the picture is beginning to look less rosy.

Wind turbine orders, it says, fell by 47% on 2021 to just 11GW. OEMs like Siemens Gamesa and Vestas are losing billions of dollars. And marine contractors are being tempted away by a strongly growing oil and gas industry.

Yet new and bigger developments appear to be announced all the time; countless offshore support and service vessels are being ordered and built; and driving it all is the race to ‘net zero’. So what’s going on?