Full length article
Green development strategy of offshore wind farm in China guided by life cycle assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106652Get rights and content

Abstract

Offshore wind power contributes to the decarbonization of the power system; however, its green development faces many challenges, including environmental impact concerns, scale limitations, and grid parity to go carbon neutral. This study applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the potential environmental impact of China's first high-power prototype windfarm. The environmental impact of the wind farm is more sensitive to steel, copper, and electricity usage. The recycling of waste turbines can be a solution to reduce the environmental impacts of not only the wind farm but also other entities such as metal producers. Overall, this wind farm case can reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 9.23 MJ and 767.9 g CO2-eq for 1 kWh electricity produced, respectively. Guided by LCA results, green development strategies that include toward the deep sea, promote industrial upgrading and synergy, and advance demonstration projects are discussed in the offshore wind power industry.

Introduction

Achieving carbon neutrality requires the construction of a green power system dominated by renewable energy (Chen et al. 2021a; Liu et al. 2022a). China is aggressively developing wind power to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, thereby giving it the world's largest total installed wind power capacity (Bahramian et al. 2021a; Kooten 2016; Liu et al. 2022a; Norvaiša et al. 2021; Xu et al. 2018). In particular, coastal areas of China have a great demand for electricity because of their population concentration and economic development, and their unique geographical location provides favorable conditions for the development of offshore wind power (Lian et al. 2022). Driven by technological advances, China's cumulative installed offshore wind capacity increased from 0.67 GW in 2014 to 9.39 GW in 2020 (Tu et al. 2021).

Despite the rapid development of offshore wind power, the industry also faces many challenges in terms of carbon neutrality. Above all, the carbon reduction potential of wind power becomes an important concern. In addition, the large sea area occupied by offshore wind power may cause usage conflicts in the sea; and its large-scale installation has saturated the inshore area and limited the development scale. In Europe, where offshore wind power started early, countries, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, have entered the stage of grid parity. Notably, as China ended the central financial subsidies in feed-in tariff for additional offshore wind power from 2021, offshore wind power has also entered the grid parity stage. These instances have intensified the competition for industrial development. Importantly, the continued development of offshore wind farms has also raised public concerns about their environmental impact (Bahramian et al. 2021b; Chowdhury et al. 2022; Lin and Chen 2019; Song et al. 2021; Zhu et al. 2022). In recent years, China has actively promoted green development and focused on solving various environmental problems. Studying the green development of wind power in the context of carbon neutrality has far-reaching practical significance under such situations. This is not only the need to build China's green power system but also the inevitable move to force the offshore wind industry to reduce environmental impact and achieve green development as soon as possible.

Considering that wind power originated in Europe (Li et al. 2020b), researchers have performed numerous related studies that include site selection feasibility (Adaramola et al. 2014; Salvador et al. 2022), economic benefits (de Prada Gil et al. 2014; Mohammadzadeh Bina et al. 2018; Nagashima et al. 2017), and technical performance (Zhang et al. 2021; Zhang et al. 2022). Given the emphasis on environmental impact, scholars have observed that wind farm installations possibly pose threats (collision deaths, disruption of migration corridors, acoustic and electromagnetic interference, changes in food supplies, and habitat degradation) to birds, fish, marine mammals, and bats (Chen et al. 2021b; Dähne et al. 2013; Garthe et al. 2017; Gaultier et al. 2020; Thaxter et al. 2017). Actually, the impacts of wind power also include the whole life-cycle, covering indirect upstream production processes, except for the direct environmental impacts. Converting the kinetic energy of the wind directly into electricity does not cause any pollution or carbon emissions. However, it has a quantitative environmental impact when considered over the entire life cycle of the wind farm (Wang and Sun 2012). Life cycle assessment (LCA), a popular environmental impact assessment method, can quantify the environmental impact of products or services during their life cycle comprehensively (Bonou et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2019a). Consequently, the impact of the whole life cycle of offshore wind power is gradually being considered by scholars.

Schleisner (2000) first focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollutant emissions from offshore and onshore wind farms in Denmark from a life-cycle perspective and calculated that the GHG emission intensity of the offshore wind projects with 500 kW turbine was approximately 16.5 g CO2-eq /kWh. With the popularization and application of offshore wind power technology, the life cycle energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions of offshore wind power projects in countries, such as the Italy (Ardente et al. 2008), Spain (Martínez et al. 2009), United States (Kumar et al. 2016), Mexico (Vargas et al. 2015), Brazil (Oebels and Pacca 2013), Canada (Siddiqui and Dincer 2017), Thailand (Glassbrook et al. 2014) and Japan (Uddin and Kumar 2014), have been evaluated. Scholars have also conducted energy efficiency and emission reduction assessments on offshore wind farms in China and compared them with other renewable energy sources (Ji and Chen 2016; Huang et al. 2017; Wang et al. 2019b; Wang and Sun 2012; Xue et al. 2015; Yang et al. 2020). Yang et al. (2018b) conducted by a process-based LCI for the Donghai Bridge Offshore Wind Farm in China, and life-cycle energy, GHG, SO2, NOx, and PM2.5 emissions were calculated. However, previous studies on life cycle analysis of wind energy have focused on individual wind turbines with rated output power that range from 100 kW to 4.5 MW rather than the entire wind farms (Arvesen and Hertwich 2012; Demir and Taşkın 2013; Huang et al. 2017; Kumar et al. 2016; Oebels and Pacca 2013; Uddin and Kumar 2014; Wang et al. 2019b; Yang et al. 2020). From international experience in recent years, scholars have successively enriched the analysis of the impact of high-power wind turbines in European countries (Garcia-Teruel et al. 2022). Particularly, China has gradually developed higher-power turbines. Hence, relevant research should be updated timely. In addition, the goal of carbon neutrality has proposed higher requirements for the green development of the offshore wind power industry. Scholars have analyzed the future development of the wind power market from the perspectives of material flow stock (Yang et al. 2020), policy effectiveness (Liu et al. 2022b; Sahu 2018), financial tools (Kumar et al. 2021; Srianandarajah et al. 2022), but lack attention to the challenges and opportunities faced by the green development of the industry. Furthermore, the existing studies have neglected the combination of LCA and the green development of the offshore wind power industry, thereby omitting the guidance of the results for industrial green development.

In this paper, a real case study data from wind farm in China is provided. Fuqing Xinghua Bay Offshore Wind Farm, which is located in Fujian Province, southeast coast of China, is the first international high-power offshore wind power experimental wind farm (Fig. 1). Particularly, wind turbines of this wind farm cover 8 models, 14 large-capacity turbine types of 8 equipment manufacturers around the world, and all of them are high-power prototypes with a power of 5 MW and above. The wind farm began operations in September 2018 after two years of construction. Research would be updated as turbines with higher capacity become more common. Then, compared with previous studies that focused on energy consumption and GHG emissions, this study considered 11 environmental impact categories, including the impact on atmosphere, ocean, and human health, etc., and conducted a comprehensive analysis of the impact differences of various environmental impact indicators in different stages by using the CML-IA model. With the help of LCA and scenario analysis, carbon emission reduction potential is assessed, and challenges and opportunities in promoting the green development of the wind power industry are discussed on the basis of LCA results, so as to formulate strategies for the green development of offshore wind power in China.

Section snippets

Goal and functional unit

The life cycle model of the functional unit defined as 1 KWh power generated from integrated turbines of the Fuqing Xinghua Bay Offshore Wind Farm (phase Ⅰ) is established in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The integrated power is generated by eight types of wind turbines. The functional unit that has been selected aims to facilitate comparability with other LCA results. The goal is to obtain the results of the product's life cycle environmental impact, compare the resource consumption

Environmental impact of different stages

After characteristic calculation of the baseline scenario, the environmental impact characteristic values of per kWh generated electricity are listed in Table 3. All results are positive and with various unit, which means there are environmental impacts.

As for all environmental impact indicators, except EP and POCP, wind farm construction is the stage with the largest contribution rate (all exceeded 43%), followed by the wind turbine manufacturing stage (Table 3). In addition, the operation and

Offshore wind power has significant emission reduction potential

Under China's carbon neutrality goal, the carbon emission reduction potential of offshore wind power has received significant attention. Among the greenhouse gas emissions in the whole life cycle of the wind farm, the CO2 emissions during the construction phase account for about one-half, whereas the proportion of the 25-year operation stage is relatively low. Recycling reduces carbon emissions as some of the equipment will be recycled at the end of the service period. Coal-fired power is the

Conclusions and policy implications

In this study, the LCA method was conducted to determine the environmental impact of offshore wind power. Among the different stages in the life cycle of wind farms, the construction and wind turbine manufacturing stages were the largest contributor to environmental impact indicators (except for EP and POCP). In terms of the sub-processes, submarine cable laying contributed the most to the ADP elements, FAETP, HTP, MAETP, and TETP. Moreover, the raw material production and electricity use

Author statement

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jingjing Chen: Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft. Bingjing Mao: Investigation, Data curation, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Yufeng Wu: Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition. Dongya Zhang: Data curation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Yiqun Wei: Data curation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Ang Yu: Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Lihong Peng: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing –

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52070007). The authors would like to thank China Three Gorges Corporation for their data accessibility for this study. We also appreciate the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.

References (61)

  • NE Chowdhury et al.

    Adverse environmental impacts of wind farm installations and alternative research pathways to their mitigation

    Clean Eng. Technol.

    (2022)
  • M de Prada Gil et al.

    Technical and economic assessment of offshore wind power plants based on variable frequency operation of clusters with a single power converter

    Appl. Energy

    (2014)
  • N Demir et al.

    Life cycle assessment of wind turbines in Pınarbaşı-Kayseri

    J. Cleaner Prod.

    (2013)
  • A Garcia-Teruel et al.

    Life cycle assessment of floating offshore wind farms: an evaluation of operation and maintenance

    Appl. Energy

    (2022)
  • KA Glassbrook et al.

    Life cycle assessment and feasibility study of small wind power in Thailand

    Energy Sustain. Dev.

    (2014)
  • Y Huang et al.

    Life cycle assessment and net energy analysis of offshore wind power systems

    Renew. Energy

    (2017)
  • S Ji et al.

    Carbon footprint accounting of a typical wind farm in China

    Appl. Energy

    (2016)
  • I Kumar et al.

    The answer my friend is Blowin’ in the wind”: A stochastic assessment off wind farms financial feasibility and economic efficiency

    Energy Policy

    (2021)
  • I Kumar et al.

    Input–output life cycle environmental assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from utility scale wind energy in the United States

    Energy Policy

    (2016)
  • H Li et al.

    A comparative analysis of the life cycle environmental emissions from wind and coal power: Evidence from China

    J. Clean. Prod.

    (2020)
  • J Li et al.

    Research on carbon emission reduction benefit of wind power project based on life cycle assessment theory

    Renew. Energy

    (2020)
  • J Lian et al.

    Assessing the life cycle risks of offshore wind turbines with suction bucket foundations

    J. Clean. Prod.

    (2022)
  • B Lin et al.

    Impacts of policies on innovation in wind power technologies in China

    Appl. Energy

    (2019)
  • L Liu et al.

    Potential contributions of wind and solar power to China's carbon neutrality

    Resour. Conserv. Recycl.

    (2022)
  • T Liu et al.

    Empirical evidence based effectiveness assessment of policy regimes for wind power development in China

    Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev.

    (2022)
  • E Martínez et al.

    Life cycle assessment of a multi-megawatt wind turbine

    Renew. Energy

    (2009)
  • S Mohammadzadeh Bina et al.

    A comprehensive approach for wind power plant potential assessment, application to northwestern Iran

    Energy

    (2018)
  • S Nagashima et al.

    Hybrid input–output table method for socioeconomic and environmental assessment of a wind power generation system

    Appl. Energy

    (2017)
  • E Norvaiša et al.

    Incorporation of wind power probabilities into long-term energy system development analysis using bottom-up models

    Energy Strategy Rev.

    (2021)
  • KB Oebels et al.

    Life cycle assessment of an onshore wind farm located at the northeastern coast of Brazil

    Renew. Energy

    (2013)
  • Cited by (15)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text