Circular transition in offshore wind Belgian Northsea

The overall objective of this project is to prepare the industry for the upcoming End of life (EoL) phase of offshore wind farms. This will be done by assessing the impact over its full lifecycle based upon all three sustainability pillars (economic, environmental and social) and elucidating technical and societal challenges and technology gaps in this EoL phase. The impact assessment framework will cover both existing offshore wind technologies (ex-posteriori analysis) as well as future offshore wind energy technologies (ex-ante analysis).
The CTO project aims to address both the EoL challenge as improving the sustainability throughout the lifecycle. The project consists of five work packages:
1) Identification of potential offshore wind energy value chain scenarios and selection of three scenario sets, including a) a baseline scenario; b) a set of scenarios including alternative offshore operations and; c) a set of scenarios including alternative material compositions.
2) Assessment of the various offshore operations (installation, O&M and decommissioning) and prioritizing one or two scenarios with alternative offshore operations.
3) Assessment of the material composition and onshore operations (material extraction, manufacturing and EoL) and prioritizing one or two scenarios with alternative material compositions.
4) Prospective sustainability assessment of the selected scenarios, combining material flow analysis (MFA) with a LCSA approach, suitable for both existing as well as future offshore wind technologies.
5) Conclusions and recommendations that may enable implementing a life cycle and sustainability mindset in the development of future windfarms.
Although CTO does not research nor develop the EoL methods itself (except for the cable – conductor – armour stripping), the CTO project strives to achieve the following quantified impact targets:
1) Reducing the expected environmental impacts (e.g. CO2-equivalent emissions) of the EoL phase with 1-10% by prioritizing the most environmental-friendly technologies (for example, due to selection of energy efficient decommissioning techniques of vessels and or potentially repurposing the primary steel components of foundations);
2) Increasing the success rate of upcoming auctions by 3-5 %. This is a plausible assumption considering that circularity may be part weighting score as well as clear criteria on EoL, lifetime extension and/or sustainability (environmental, social or economic dimensions);
3) Reducing the cost of expected decommissioning by 1-10%, or – conversely – motivate the supplementary cost of more costly EoL-decommissioning techniques that do however have fewer external effects on the (marine) environment;
4) 2-4 A1-C1 papers, published within 5 years after the project duration;
5) Engaging up to 5 developers, (marine) contractors, operators, financers, to include LCSA in their offshore wind investment decision & operations framework.
6) Reusing 90-95% of the conductor material of the array and export cables by developing a technique to maintain the conducting characteristics in order to only replace the insulation, armour and cable sheath;
7) Draft recommendations for social LCA (S-LCA) of offshore energy projects; to take into account e.g. in the existing guidelines.

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