A spatial and technical assessment of floating offshore wind energy in the red sea using a GIS-AHP framework

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) are mounted on buoyant foundations held in position by moorings, enabling deployment well beyond the 60 m depth range of bottom-fixed designs. In the Red Sea-where steep bathymetry quickly exceeds tens and hundreds of meters-this configuration unlocks areas that are inaccessible to fixed foundations. Here, we present a geospatial screening tailored to Saudi Arabia's Red Sea, combining GIS layers and multi-criteria weighting to delineate technically suitable zones considering wind resource, depth, navigation corridors, and national maritime limits. Across the two most suitable clusters, we estimate about 32-57 GW of installable capacity and ~ 98-174 TWh/y of gross energy, depending on array density, capacity factor, and loss assumptions.