Offshore wind power: a reliable and renewable energy source for all?

Climate change is a major challenge of the 21st century with potential severe consequences of global warming on all biological systems. The main reason is the CO2 emissions caused by human activities. In this context, renewable energies are one of the most promising solutions to strive against this issue. This master’s thesis aims to a better understanding of the offshore wind power, by studying the advantages, drawbacks and potential of this technology. Wind offers a large and clean resource of power, available all over the world. Wind power plants have first been developed onshore in 1980 as it is an easy and cheap technology. However, onshore wind is limited in terms of capacity suffering from volatile wind conditions and limited acceptance from the population. Conversely, offshore wind power allows very large-scale development, featuring larger turbines in areas where a stronger and more consistent wind blows. This allows to generate more power and to have better capacity factors, explaining why offshore wind power has recently emerged as an excellent asset to develop renewable energies at large-scale. Yet, offshore wind power currently suffers from one major drawback: the shallow-water requirement. Wind turbines are currently placed on fixed foundation that can reach a maximum water depth of 60 meters. This drastically limits the possible development areas and has led to large development inequalities across the world. Floating wind turbines are being developed to remove this restriction. Several approaches are under testing to tackle stability issues, all successful so far. This would be a game changing technology because it would unlock countless areas to implement offshore wind farms particularly for countries that do not have offshore shallow waters.