Floating wind power in deep-sea area: Life cycle assessment of environmental impacts

Abstract

Floating offshore wind power, an emerging technology in the offshore wind industry, has attracted increasing attention for its potential to cooperate with other renewable energies to decarbonize energy systems. The environmental effects of the floating offshore wind farm in deep-sea areas should be considered, and methods to enhance the low-carbon effect should be devised. There have been a few studies assessing the environmental effects of the floating offshore wind farm, but the scales of these studies were relatively small. This study evaluated the environmental impacts of a floating wind farm with 100 wind turbines of 6.7 MW using life cycle assessment (LCA) method, based on the Chinese core life cycle database. Results showed that the carbon footprint of the wind farm was 25.76 g CO₂-eq/kWh, which was relatively low in terms of global warming potential. Additionally, the floating offshore wind farm contributed most to eutrophication potential. A ± 20% variation in steel resulted in a ±3% to ±15% variation in the indicator score of each environmental category, indicating that the environmental performance of the wind farm was mainly influenced by this parameter. Moreover, scenario analysis showed that electric arc furnace routes can reduce the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from upstream process of the floating offshore wind farm by 1.75 Mt CO₂-eq by 2030. Emission reduction of the steel industry will further reduce the carbon footprint of the floating offshore wind farm. In the future, more baseline data need to be collected to improve the reliability of LCA. The effects of the floating offshore wind farm on marine ecology and atmospheric physical characteristics remain to be investigated in depth.