Comparative Research On The Lifetime Resource Consumption And Environmental Impact Of An Offshore Wind Farm

With the rapid development of global economy,the energy consumption is increasing day by day.The greenhouse gas emission and environmental pollution in the process of traditional energy production have received more and more attention all over the world.Wind power is the main utilization form of wind energy.Compared with other new energy sources,wind power is cheaper,cleaner and more effective.In recent years,the global wind power industry is booming,especially offshore wind power projects.Although the pollution in wind power generation process is little,the upstream resource consumption and environmental impact of wind power generation are still controversial.Most of the current studies on wind power projects focus on onshore wind power,and comprehensively evaluating the resource and energy consumption and environmental impacts of offshore wind power projects during their life cycle is of great significance.In addition,whether offshore wind power is more environmentally effective than other power generation technologies remains to be understood.This article selected the first great-power offshore wind test farm in China as the research object,using Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)method to establish the LCA model of offshore wind farm based on the actual production data.The resource and energy consumption,environmental impact and atmospheric emissions of offshore wind power project life cycle were studied and evaluated.At the same time,the uncertainty in the life cycle is explored through Monte Carlo analysis,sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis.Finally,the differences of emission reduction potential between sea-land wind power projects and other power generation technologies were analyzed and compared,and suggestions are given from the each stage of the life cycle,the uncertainty analysis results and the development of offshore wind power industry,respectively.The results show that both the environmental impact,the depletion of resources and energy and the emission of atmospheric characteristic substances are concentrated on the upstream of wind power generation(wind turbine production and transportation stage and wind farm construction stage).Only a small amount of operation and maintenance consumption and emissions were caused during the 25-year operation of the wind farm.The discard and disposal stage will reduce the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle to a certain extent.Relatively speaking,the most important environmental impact on the life cycle of offshore wind farm is marine ecotoxicity,and the least is depletion of ozone layer.The results of uncertainty analysis show that the uncertainty of LCA results of the offshore wind farm can reach the standard.The most sensitive materials of the offshore wind farm are steel,glass fiber,epoxy resin and concrete.The consumption of electricity and the use of iron and steel materials in the production and manufacture of wind turbine equipment are the key factors of the life cycle environment impacts of the wind turbine.But no obvious correlation is between the installed capacity of the wind turbine and the life cycle environment impacts.The energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission of offshore wind power projects during the entire life cycle is larger than that of onshore wind power projects,but significantly smaller than that of coal-fired power generation.According to the energy consumption intensity and CO2 emission intensity of different renewable energy generation technologies,they are hydroelectricity,onshore wind power,offshore wind power,biomass power generation and solar power generation,in ascending order.Compared with other renewable energy generation technologies,wind power generation technology has obvious advantages in reducing emissions.Finally,this article puts forward the following suggestions for improvement:(1)Based on each stage of the life cycle,select the products of key iron and steel enterprises,improve the proportion of electric furnace steel in the iron and steel industry,and seek for alternative materials of iron and steel;Respond positively to the national policy,and use ships with low sulfur fuel on the construction of offshore wind power projects;Pay more attention to the recovery process,and improve the recycling process of waste wind turbine equipment.(2)Based on the uncertainty analysis results,promote the joint development of the steel and wind power industry,research and develop high-strength new environmental friendly materials,and reduce the power consumption of equipment production.(3)Based on the development of offshore wind power industry,implement environmental monitoring and ecological restoration,research and develop the offshore wind power technology,construct the offshore wind power demonstration projects,and formulate market incentive policies.