Ezion Holdings Limited, a leading provider of Liftboats & Service Rigs has entered into a strategic cooperation agreementwith a Chinese state- owned enterprise (“SOE”) to support offshore wind pow er installation projects in China which are mainly along the coastal regions of China.
As part of the environmental goals in China’s 12 th Five Year Plan (2011-2015), targets have been set for non-fossil energy to account for 11.4% of the total energy consumption and for CO 2 discharge per unit of GDP to reduce by 17%. Offshore wind power development can help to reduce air pollution in certain Chinese coastal cities which are currently burning coal to generate electricity as wind turbines installed along the coast can help provide more clean energy into c oastal cities’ power grid.
China has also set a target of 5GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2015 and 30GW by 2020 in its current 5 year plan. As the target has yet been met, it is ex pected that there will be more offshore wind power installation projects in China over the next few years. The SOE is part of a central enterprise power gener ation corporation under supervision of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Comm ission of the State Council of China.
The SOE will be responsible for the Engineering, Procurement and Construction of the entire offshore wind power project which includes the design optimization, manufacturing, transportation and installation of the wind turbine foundation for offshore wind power, as well as the installation of the turbine and substation, c able laying and the operations and maintenance of the wind farm.
Ezion will be supporting the SOE using the Group’s Service Rigs for the loading, construction, transportation and installation aspects of the wind turbine development projects under the Agreement. In addition, the Group will also be provi ding the relevant technical expertise required for the construction and installation of the wind turbine foundation and components.