Developing the industrial capacity for energy transitions: Resource formation for offshore wind in Europe

• Resource formation is key for energy transitions and renewables growth. • Lack of attention to industrial capacity to provide key complementary assets. • First-of-its kind empirical analysis of European offshore wind power 2000–2019. • Industrial capacity development strongest in countries with deployment. • Findings show a geographically concentrated supplier network to offshore wind power. As energy transitions progress from formative to growth or acceleration phases, issues related to resource formation increase in importance. In this paper we address a type of resource formation that has received scant attention in the sustainability transitions literature to date: developing the industrial capacity to manufacture and deliver key complementary assets (i.e. components and services) to large energy projects. Such supply chain elements constitute a significant share of investment, are crucial for the upscaling of low-carbon technologies, and offer important job and value creation opportunities for different regions and countries. Empirically we study the build-up of industrial capacity to supply key complementary assets to the European offshore wind power market in the 2000–2019 period through three phases (formative, take-off, growth) of development. We provide explanations to observed spatio-temporal patterns of industrial capacity development by considering 1) industry life-cycle dynamics, 2) pre-existing assets and industrial relatedness, and 3) home market opportunities.