Posters

Abstract

To achieve significant progress in upscaling offshore wind energy and reducing the costs for offshore wind turbines, the spotlight has been primarily on new windfarm deployments. The challenge of decommissioning offshore windfarms (OWFs) and related infrastructures such as cables at the end of their lifecycle has been relatively overlooked. Legislation and regulation states that all the thousands of wind turbines, including cables, which are being built should also be decommissioned at end of life. It is therefore important to investigate how this can be done without compromising on other targets such as those set for nature restoration and circularity. It is crucial to take a comprehensive approach to the decommissioning issue and retain a long-term perspective. The main challenge this research is addressing is the need to strike a balance between decommissioning and meeting nature conservation, restoration, and circularity targets. To do so, sustainable decommissioning should be the norm. In our research, we defined sustainable decommissioning as a decommissioning process that integrates principles of nature conservation, restoration, and circularity. With our research we aim to start a discussion that will lead to a decision-making framework on decommissioning offshore wind farm infrastructure with respect to nature and circularity. We believe that this framework must be developed in collaboration with relevant stakeholders such as offshore wind farm developers, manufacturers, government, NGOs, and scientists. Our goal is to make sure that industry is motivated to develop comprehensive plans for sustainable and nature-inclusive design which includes a sustainable decommissioning plan ensuring minimal impacts on marine ecosystems and maximum circularity when decommissioning offshore windfarms. And that EU regulators and Member States take the necessary steps to enhance legal flexibility regarding decommissioning and to protect ecologically valuable areas that have been created.