Norway's Enova scheme is not a pilot programme. It targets commercial-lifetime floating offshore wind — projects built to run for 20 to 30 years, evaluated by a single brutal metric: P50 net annual energy per NOK of support. Energy produced divided by public money spent. The project that delivers the most output for the least subsidy wins.
Seventy per cent of the score comes from this calculation alone. The remaining 30% covers qualitative factors — future LCOE trajectory, scalability, environmental coexistence. But novelty is not rewarded. Enova explicitly favours industrialisable designs over technology demonstrations. Future cost competitiveness matters. Originality does not.
The Number You Cannot Fake
Most applicants understand that credible modelling matters. Fewer understand that Enova will adjust estimates it considers unrealistic — and that those adjustments change the ranking. Wind resource quality, turbine availability assumptions, electrical losses, wake effects: each one is scrutinised. Conservative, defensible numbers with proper uncertainty documentation consistently outperform ambitious projections, because credibility compounds across every input.
The Failure Point Nobody Talks About
The most common reason a competitive project loses is not weak cost modelling. It is non-material conditions.
All pre-FID conditions that are not yet resolved — permitting items, regulatory approvals, grid slot confirmations — must be listed explicitly in the application. They must not undermine the credibility of the 24-month FID pathway. Enova expects applicants to know what is open and explain why it does not threaten delivery. Projects that leave this vague, or that claim a clean FID path when outstanding items say otherwise, lose credibility in ways that are difficult to recover from.
This is a documented pattern. It is also entirely avoidable.
The full Enova 2026 Executive Brief covers the complete evaluation framework, qualification requirements, key deadlines, and what separates winning projects from credible runners-up. Get the brief →