A Qualitative Study of Access to Capital for the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to understand the demand for capital in the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster (NOWC) and suggest how the cluster management can facilitate access to capital for member companies to accelerate growth. This thesis aims to organize knowledge and lay a foundation for a joint capital strategy for the NOWC.

This thesis investigates access to capital in the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster through semi-structured interviews with ten companies. To offer the opposing perspective, four semi-structed interviews were also conducted with investors and capital actors to broaden the understanding of the investor and capital actor mindset and preferences.

This study finds that the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster may be significantly capital intensive, especially for technology companies. Particularly, the young companies seem to struggle to access capital for further growth. The demand for capital appears to be so substantial that venture capital investors may not be a sufficient source to capital. These findings indicate a gap between governmental funding agencies and venture capital. Young companies should focus on attaining capital from policy instruments and target capital actors with longer time-horizon. Furthermore, this thesis argues that current valuation methods may fail to take into account the risk of climate change.

The main limitation to this thesis are the limited data samples, and hence the findings may not be representative for the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster, nor the offshore wind industry. Thus, further research is encouraged to focus on larger data sets that allow for a broader quantitative analysis for investments in floating offshore wind.