IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v34y2009i3p742-747.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Life cycle assessment of a floating offshore wind turbine

Author

Listed:
  • Weinzettel, Jan
  • Reenaas, Marte
  • Solli, Christian
  • Hertwich, Edgar G.

Abstract

A development in wind energy technology towards higher nominal power of the wind turbines is related to the shift of the turbines to better wind conditions. After the shift from onshore to offshore areas, there has been an effort to move further from the sea coast to the deep water areas, which requires floating windmills. Such a concept brings additional environmental impact through higher material demand. To evaluate additional environmental burdens and to find out whether they can be rebalanced or even offset by better wind conditions, a prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) study of one floating concept has been performed and the results are presented in this paper. A comparison with existing LCA studies of conventional offshore wind power and electricity from a natural gas combined cycle is presented. The results indicate similar environmental impacts of electricity production using floating wind power plants as using non-floating offshore wind power plants. The most important stage in the life cycle of the wind power plants is the production of materials. Credits that are connected to recycling these materials at the end-of-life of the power plant are substantial.

Suggested Citation

  • Weinzettel, Jan & Reenaas, Marte & Solli, Christian & Hertwich, Edgar G., 2009. "Life cycle assessment of a floating offshore wind turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 742-747.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:34:y:2009:i:3:p:742-747
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2008.04.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108001754
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2008.04.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ardente, Fulvio & Beccali, Marco & Cellura, Maurizio & Lo Brano, Valerio, 2008. "Energy performances and life cycle assessment of an Italian wind farm," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 200-217, January.
    2. Schleisner, L, 2000. "Life cycle assessment of a wind farm and related externalities," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 279-288.
    3. Lenzen, Manfred & Wachsmann, Ulrike, 2004. "Wind turbines in Brazil and Germany: an example of geographical variability in life-cycle assessment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 119-130, February.
    4. Lenzen, Manfred & Munksgaard, Jesper, 2002. "Energy and CO2 life-cycle analyses of wind turbines—review and applications," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 339-362.
    5. Khan, Faisal I. & Hawboldt, Kelly & Iqbal, M.T., 2005. "Life Cycle Analysis of wind–fuel cell integrated system," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 157-177.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arvesen, Anders & Hertwich, Edgar G., 2012. "Assessing the life cycle environmental impacts of wind power: A review of present knowledge and research needs," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(8), pages 5994-6006.
    2. Nugent, Daniel & Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2014. "Assessing the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from solar PV and wind energy: A critical meta-survey," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 229-244.
    3. Feng, Kuishuang & Hubacek, Klaus & Siu, Yim Ling & Li, Xin, 2014. "The energy and water nexus in Chinese electricity production: A hybrid life cycle analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 342-355.
    4. Mohamed R. Gomaa & Hegazy Rezk & Ramadan J. Mustafa & Mujahed Al-Dhaifallah, 2019. "Evaluating the Environmental Impacts and Energy Performance of a Wind Farm System Utilizing the Life-Cycle Assessment Method: A Practical Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-25, August.
    5. Kubiszewski, Ida & Cleveland, Cutler J. & Endres, Peter K., 2010. "Meta-analysis of net energy return for wind power systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 218-225.
    6. Karagiannis, Ioannis C. & Soldatos, Peter G., 2010. "Estimation of critical CO2 values when planning the power source in water desalination: The case of the small Aegean islands," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 3891-3897, August.
    7. Amponsah, Nana Yaw & Troldborg, Mads & Kington, Bethany & Aalders, Inge & Hough, Rupert Lloyd, 2014. "Greenhouse gas emissions from renewable energy sources: A review of lifecycle considerations," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 461-475.
    8. Mendecka, Barbara & Lombardi, Lidia, 2019. "Life cycle environmental impacts of wind energy technologies: A review of simplified models and harmonization of the results," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 462-480.
    9. Abolhosseini, Shahrouz & Heshmati, Almas & Altmann, Jörn, 2014. "A Review of Renewable Energy Supply and Energy Efficiency Technologies," IZA Discussion Papers 8145, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Niklas Andersen & Ola Eriksson & Karl Hillman & Marita Wallhagen, 2016. "Wind Turbines’ End-of-Life: Quantification and Characterisation of Future Waste Materials on a National Level," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-24, November.
    11. Savino, Matteo M. & Manzini, Riccardo & Della Selva, Vincenzo & Accorsi, Riccardo, 2017. "A new model for environmental and economic evaluation of renewable energy systems: The case of wind turbines," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 739-752.
    12. Varun & Bhat, I.K. & Prakash, Ravi, 2009. "LCA of renewable energy for electricity generation systems--A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 1067-1073, June.
    13. Yang, Jin & Chen, Bin, 2016. "Emergy-based sustainability evaluation of wind power generation systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 239-246.
    14. Oebels, Kerstin B. & Pacca, Sergio, 2013. "Life cycle assessment of an onshore wind farm located at the northeastern coast of Brazil," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 60-70.
    15. Raadal, Hanne Lerche & Gagnon, Luc & Modahl, Ingunn Saur & Hanssen, Ole Jørgen, 2011. "Life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the generation of wind and hydro power," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(7), pages 3417-3422, September.
    16. Jesuina Chipindula & Venkata Sai Vamsi Botlaguduru & Hongbo Du & Raghava Rao Kommalapati & Ziaul Huque, 2018. "Life Cycle Environmental Impact of Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms in Texas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-18, June.
    17. Marimuthu, C. & Kirubakaran, V., 2013. "Carbon pay back period for solar and wind energy project installed in India: A critical review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 80-90.
    18. Song, Cuihong & Gardner, Kevin H. & Klein, Sharon J.W. & Souza, Simone Pereira & Mo, Weiwei, 2018. "Cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions from dams in the United States of America," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 945-956.
    19. Turconi, Roberto & Boldrin, Alessio & Astrup, Thomas, 2013. "Life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation technologies: Overview, comparability and limitations," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 555-565.
    20. Lombardi, Lidia & Mendecka, Barbara & Carnevale, Ennio & Stanek, Wojciech, 2018. "Environmental impacts of electricity production of micro wind turbines with vertical axis," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 128(PB), pages 553-564.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:34:y:2009:i:3:p:742-747. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.