Floating wind opens the 80% of offshore wind resource that sits in water too deep for fixed foundations — and 2025 delivered its largest-ever commercial commitments (the UK's 4.5 GW Celtic Sea round, Norway's ~$5.5bn Utsira Nord aid competition) — but with only 278 MW installed worldwide and a floating LCOE still ~40% above fixed-bottom even on 2050 projections, this is a sovereign-underwritten 2030s option whose near-term scoreboard is leases converting to FIDs, not megawatt-hours.
📈 What changed: Equinor terminated its 750 MW Bandibuli floating wind project in South Korea (22 May 2026), after missing the REC support contract's final signing deadline (7 Jan 2026) — Equinor'…
| Indicator | Score | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Maturity higher is better · high confidence | 24/100 | Demonstration-to-pre-commercial: 278 MW installed globally against 83 GW of offshore wind, with no dominant platform design. |
| Evidence Strength higher is better · high confidence | 75/100 | Leasing and policy facts are T1 (Crown Estate, CRS, GWEC); project economics live in trade press and consultant notes. |
| Commercial Proximity higher is better · high confidence | 27/100 | Sovereign offtake anchors a mid-2030s pipeline; nothing material earns before 2030. |
| Capital & Policy Support higher is better · high confidence | 64/100 | Large sovereign support ex-US (Norway ~$5.5bn, UK leasing, France strikes) against an actively hostile US. |
| Crowding Risk lower is better · high confidence | 15/100 | Frontier-thin: pure-plays are micro-caps or private; institutional exposure must ride diversified names. |
| Reflexivity Risk lower is better · high confidence | 82/100 | Trades on policy headlines with project economics wholly dependent on state support. |
Every indicator score is computed by the Northstar engine from analyst-set ordinal bands — never hand-written, never stored.
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