Proliferation of offshore wind farms in the North Sea and surrounding waters revealed by satellite image time series

Xu, Wenxuan; Wu, Wei; Dong, Yu; Lu, Wei; Liu, Yongchao; Zhao, Biao; Li, Huiting; Yang, Ruihuan

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2020.110167

Cited by 27 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Renewable energy solutions, including offshore wind, are prerequisite for clean growth and thus the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions needed to mitigate against climate change. Offshore wind energy in shelf seas has seen a rapid increase over the past decade (Díaz and Soares, 2020;Xu et al, 2020), motivated by: high-quality and reliable energy (wind) resources (Esteban et al, 2011); space availability and site accessibility for installation of large, efficient, turbine systems (Sun et al, 2012); rapidly maturing, reliable and energy-efficient technologies (Jansen et al, 2020); and reduced visual impact on populated areas (Wen et al, 2018). Government programmes have helped drive development of renewable offshore wind energy from offshore wind farm arrays, of tens increasing to hundreds, of offshore wind turbines (OWT) supported by various fixed foundation designs with new floating foundations being designed to access deeper water sites.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Mixing in Seasonally Stratified Shelf Seas by Offshore Wind Farm Infrastructure

et al. 2022

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The offshore wind energy sector has rapidly expanded over the past two decades, providing a renewable energy solution for coastal nations. Sector development has been led in Europe, but is growing globally. Most developments to date have been in well-mixed, i.e., unstratified, shallow-waters near to shore. Sector growth is, for the first time, pushing developments to deep water, into a brand new environment: seasonally stratified shelf seas. Seasonally stratified shelf seas, where water density varies with depth, have a disproportionately key role in primary production, marine ecosystem and biogeochemical cycling. Infrastructure will directly mix stratified shelf seas. The magnitude of this mixing, additional to natural background processes, has yet to be fully quantified. If large enough it may erode shelf sea stratification. Therefore, offshore wind growth may destabilize and fundamentally change shelf sea systems. However, enhanced mixing may also positively impact some marine ecosystems. This paper sets the scene for sector development into this new environment, reviews the potential physical and environmental benefits and impacts of large scale industrialization of seasonally stratified shelf seas and identifies areas where research is required to best utilize, manage, and mitigate environmental change.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Mixing in Seasonally Stratified Shelf Seas by Offshore Wind Farm Infrastructure

et al. 2022

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“…In addition to the spatial locations, the estimated first appearance of an OWT between 2014 and 2019 is provided in their study. Xu et al (2020) investigated multispectral images from the Sentinel-2 and Landsat missions. To extract marine infrastructure, they used order statistic filtering in combinations with predefined thresholds.…”

Section: Related Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global dynamics of the offshore wind energy sector monitored with Sentinel-1: Turbine count, installed capacity and site specifications

Hoeser¹,

Kuenzer²

2022

Preprint

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With the promotion of renewable energy production and a planned phaseout of fossil fuels until 2040, the offshore wind energy sector has started to expand and will continue to increase its capacity in the upcoming decades. This study presents how the installed capacity can be derived from radar imagery provided by the Sentinel-1 mission for all offshore wind turbines on the entire Earth. By further combining freely available Earth observation and GIS data, commonly reported attributes of the offshore wind energy sector are compiled. All attributes are investigated to provide an in-depth overview of the developments of the offshore wind energy sector over the last five years. Between 2016 and 2021, the installed capacity worldwide grew from 13.5 GW to 40.6 GW. This corresponds to an increase of 27.1 GW or 200\%. In total 8,885 offshore wind turbines (OWTs) were installed until June 2021 with an additional 852 under construction. The European Union (15.2 GW), China (14.1 GW) and the United Kingdom (10.7 GW) are the three major contributors to the offshore wind energy sector. China has seen the largest growth in the last five years of 13 GW, followed by the EU with 8 GW and the UK with 5.8 GW. The provided in-depth analysis at the end of this study describes the offshore wind energy sector to be in a transition phase between decades of maturity and massive growth at a time when carbon-neutral energy production is massively supported. Overall the proposed methods for independent offshore wind turbine capacity estimation and spatiotemporal investigation of the offshore wind energy sector can be used by all stakeholders involved in the upcoming challenge of integrated planning and implementation of offshore wind energy projects.

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“…Offshore wind decommissioning is a growing subject area, with 112 publications (search in Table 3), of which 86 hold direct or some relevance to offshore wind (Figure 3). Subjects covered include estimating the scale of the decommissioning challenges (aided by articles such as [60,261,262]); cost models and decommissioning scenarios (e.g., [171,200,204,[263][264][265][266][267][268][269][270][271][272][273]); decommissioning processes; challenges and solutions [8,141,177,274,275]; vessels and port facilities (e.g., [276]); end-of-use scenarios (e.g., [195,277,278]); risk, durability and the remaining life estimates (e.g., [279][280][281]); alternative joints to ease decommissioning [282]; environmental impacts (e.g., [283][284][285][286]); and calls for better policy, guidelines and certification (e.g., [8,[287][288][289]). Alternative searches (Table 3) to explore further include removal (72 publications), extraction (187) and dismantling …”

Section: Decommissioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Framework and Baseline for the Integration of a Sustainable Circular Economy in Offshore Wind

Velenturf

2021

Energies

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Circular economy and renewable energy infrastructure such as offshore wind farms are often assumed to be developed in synergy as part of sustainable transitions. Offshore wind is among the preferred technologies for low-carbon energy. Deployment is forecast to accelerate over ten times faster than onshore wind between 2021 and 2025, while the first generation of offshore wind turbines is about to be decommissioned. However, the growing scale of offshore wind brings new sustainability challenges. Many of the challenges are circular economy-related, such as increasing resource exploitation and competition and underdeveloped end-of-use solutions for decommissioned components and materials. However, circular economy is not yet commonly and systematically applied to offshore wind. Circular economy is a whole system approach aiming to make better use of products, components and materials throughout their consecutive lifecycles. The purpose of this study is to enable the integration of a sustainable circular economy into the design, development, operation and end-of-use management of offshore wind infrastructure. This will require a holistic overview of potential circular economy strategies that apply to offshore wind, because focus on no, or a subset of, circular solutions would open the sector to the risk of unintended consequences, such as replacing carbon impacts with water pollution, and short-term private cost savings with long-term bills for taxpayers. This study starts with a systematic review of circular economy and wind literature as a basis for the coproduction of a framework to embed a sustainable circular economy throughout the lifecycle of offshore wind energy infrastructure, resulting in eighteen strategies: design for circular economy, data and information, recertification, dematerialisation, waste prevention, modularisation, maintenance and repair, reuse and repurpose, refurbish and remanufacturing, lifetime extension, repowering, decommissioning, site recovery, disassembly, recycling, energy recovery, landfill and re-mining. An initial baseline review for each strategy is included. The application and transferability of the framework to other energy sectors, such as oil and gas and onshore wind, are discussed. This article concludes with an agenda for research and innovation and actions to take by industry and government.

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Proliferation of offshore wind farms in the North Sea and surrounding waters revealed by satellite image time series

Cited by 27 publications

References 47 publications

Anthropogenic Mixing in Seasonally Stratified Shelf Seas by Offshore Wind Farm Infrastructure

Anthropogenic Mixing in Seasonally Stratified Shelf Seas by Offshore Wind Farm Infrastructure

Global dynamics of the offshore wind energy sector monitored with Sentinel-1: Turbine count, installed capacity and site specifications

A Framework and Baseline for the Integration of a Sustainable Circular Economy in Offshore Wind

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