The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
‘Very poor quality’ plans for offshore wind decom
More than 3.5GW of global offshore wind capacity will reach the end of operational life by 2035 if no other action is taken – so says the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.
Most of those turbines are in north-west Europe, primarily the North Sea, with the largest share being in UK waters. The average lifespan is 20-25 years.
ORE calculates that around 600 turbines will get the chop by 2030. Push on another five years, and EV extrapolation seems to point to around 800-900 being removed by 2035.
It seems a lot, but it’s roughly equivalent to only two or three gas-fired or multi-fuel power stations such as Peterhead.
These numbers take no account of repowering, improvements in maintenance and repair regimes or economic expediency.
In this regard, North Sea oil and gas sets an important precedent. A huge number of fields are now well past original expectation, and there are many platforms which had a design life of 20-25 years, but which are now 40 years old or more.
And right now, expediency has thrown a spanner into the works of both industries because of Russia’s war with Ukraine. This has led to a dramatic rewrite of the global oil and gas supplies map, triggering an acceleration of the green energy push.
It is why the UK Government, for example, is resetting capacity targets and overhauling the projects’ rule books for offshore wind, as are neighbours across the North Sea, and why it is pushing oil and gas operators to maximise production, regardless of global warming.
In the UK’s Offshore Wind Sector Deal published in March 2019, the prior target of 30GW was pushed to 40GW fixed turbines plus 1GW for floaters.
In April, the target was reset again to 50GW fixed and 5GW floaters.
DNV forecasts that the UK offshore wind industry will have around 19.5GW installed by mid-decade. That leaves only another five years to vastly more than double that capacity.
But, as the First and Second World Wars attest, it is remarkable what can be achieved in war-driven deep crisis.
EU neighbours have dramatically ramped up their targets, too.
In February, the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) agreed under the EU Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy to set a 2030 target of at least 60GW and 300GW by 2050.
The EU also plans to develop at least 1GW of ocean energy and other emerging technologies by 2030, and 40GW by 2050.
In May, via the Esbjerg Declaration, North Sea littoral states Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands agreed to jointly develop 150GW of new capacity in their waters by 2050, together with the creation of “energy islands” and export grid build-out.
They also strengthened their commitment to offshore hydrogen and plan to build 30GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030.
Then, in September, the EU refined and further reinforced its offshore energy targets.
Energy ministers linked to the North Seas Energy Cooperation and the European Commission have pledged a “significant increase in their collective ambition”.
Nine have agreed to reach at least 260GW of offshore wind energy by 2050: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
This will represent more than 85% of the EU-wide ambition to reach 300GW by 2050 and is 17 times more than all of the EU’s current offshore wind capacity.
The nine also laid out intermediate targets of 76GW by 2030 and 193GW by 2040.
The numbers are huge and smell of political ambition driven by nearpanic.
When it comes to the latest commitments regarding offshore wind, there is the risk that the declarations may lead to significant over-build and therefore over-capacity resulting in mothballing and early decommissioning of far from life expired generating plants.
In the UK, there also is the risk that the contracts for difference system, which has over the past decade led to dramatic reductions in the cost of windfarms, especially offshore, will end up
The Scottish Government should not join a race to the bottom and instead would do better to make sure to deliver against their own priorities
strangling innovation, quality and safety. It will simply be the cheapest deal.
Expediency will take charge – and, in turn, this may have serious impacts on the drive to achieve a viable circular economy when it comes to offshore wind.
In theory, everything installed on the UK continental shelf will have to be removed.
ORE Catapult has examined what it sees as the options ahead.
A cost-benefit analysis of five end-of-life scenarios was conducted for a representative UK offshore wind farm of 35 turbines (6MW rating) reaching its 25-year operating life in 2040.
The scenarios were full removal, partial removal, full repowering, partial repowering and life extension.
ORE’s analysis shows that partial repowering with a 10MW turbine upgrade in a 210MW offshore wind farm site offers the highest net present value (NPV) of £221 million, extending the wind farm’s life for a further 25 years.
Life extension is the second-most economically attractive option, with a £148m NPV having the lowest extra cost among all scenarios, but also preserving the same annual electricity production for a further 10 years.
Compared to partial
repowering, the cost of replacing foundations and cables reduces the return the developer or operator can expect from full repowering to £105m.
Total and partial decommissioning do not offer any wind farm revenue return to the developer or operator.
There is no mention of what the impacts on other sea users could be as a result of leaving infrastructure partially in place. In that regard, the analysis displays partiality that favours the wind farm developer or operator.
ORE admits: “There is currently no standard legislation to specify the best practices after operational life ends, with decisions strongly
driven by the physical conditions, theoretically admissible lifetimes of turbines, site conditions, country legislation, logistical difficulties and environmental impact.”
The catapult is currently developing an industrywide programme to cover not only the issues and understanding of what decommissioning will mean, but the wider circular economy impacts that component reuse and material recycling might have.
Its five-year Circular Economy for the Wind Sector Joint Industry Programme aims to bring together ideas and solutions from different researchers, operators, developers and
policymakers for the most sustainable practices that can be adopted at the end of a wind farm’s operating life.
It is also developing the UK Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence – although for why is a puzzle, as none of the wind floater technologies developed and built so far have happened here.
Dr Anne Velenturf, senior research fellow in circular economy at Leeds University, and who leads circular economy research for ORE, has strong views about what is presently not right about offshore wind, at least in the UK context.
She told EV: “It is very important for the wind industry to stay open and transparent, and to really deal with the sustainability challenges that they are facing.
“Credibility and trust are easily lost and very difficult to regain, something fossil fuel companies know about.”
A couple of years ago, in a formal response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on decom, Velenturf warned: “A review of offshore wind decommissioning plans by our team at the University of Leeds revealed that the current guidance for the whole of the UK has resulted in very poor quality decommissioning plans (for offshore wind).”
In other words, the department for business, energy and industrial strategy is not doing its job properly.
Velenturf warned: “The Scottish Government should not join a race to the bottom and instead would do better to make sure to deliver against their own priorities in their National Performance Framework.
“Decommissioning programmes should set out the extent of infrastructure to be removed, methods and processes.
“They should include a base case of all infrastructure being removed, alongside any alternatives that the operator proposes, backed up by evidence and reasoning for the preferred option.
“If we assume that the guidance has been more or less copied from the guidance provided by BEIS for the whole of the UK, then we can conclude that the guidance is unlikely to achieve any of these aspirations based on the general state of current decommissioning programmes that are publicly available.”
EV wonders whether this is also the case on the other side of the North Sea, or whether a more responsible approach to offshore wind sustainablility, let alone decom, is already ordained.