By Jörn-Jakob Luhn
When sitting over another assignment in the Institute’s library, do you too occasionally look out the big window and imagine walking along a sandy beach or refreshing yourself with a dip in the spuming waves?
For me, summer at the sea has always been a highlight during the year, offering me a time to relax, disconnect, and refuel. For as long as I can remember, my family and I have spent our summer holidays in the same old thatched cottage on the same little island with the same old smiling lady (who has unfortunately passed away a few weeks ago).
Some ten years ago, I once again climbed up the old lighthouse that sits on the highest hill of my beloved little island Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea. Painted in red and white, the lighthouse had guided the seafarers for over a century. However, when I watched the sun going down over the horizon that evening, the panorama was different. In the distance, I could count twenty-four wind turbines standing proud of the sea and sparkling in the last sunshine of the day. Baffled by my discovery, I observed the windmills with childish enthusiasm and found a wind farm in the middle of the sea quite a revolutionary thing that I had never seen with my own eyes before. However, what I also realised was that the sea does not only provide us with energy to recharge our “inner” batteries. But it is also a vast source of energy in the more technical sense: for the generation of electricity.
As I had to learn later, my visual discovery of the Baltic 1 offshore wind farm had been nothing really novel. The world’s first offshore wind farm near Vindeby (Denmark) had started operating as early as 1991 (Ørsted 2019: 9). It consisted of eleven wind turbines being able to satisfy the annual electricity demand of 2,200 households (ibid.). Although only being a pilot project, the Vindeby wind farm marked the starting point of a continuous evolution of offshore wind power. In the following years until the turn of the millennium, offshore wind farms grew larger and more countries launched related projects, mainly in Northern Europe.
Since the 2000s, offshore wind power has become more technologically advanced, cost-competitive, and globally spread: today, a single wind turbine can be as powerful as three Vindeby wind farms, and turbine power is going to be further enhanced in the future (see Frangoul 2021). Currently, an entire offshore wind farm can provide over 1 million households with electricity, having the same power as one nuclear power plant’s reactor block – around 1 gigawatt (U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy 2021). In addition, electricity from offshore wind has become significantly cheaper: in Northern Europe, it is already cost-competitive when compared with fossil fuel-based power generation (IRENA 2019: 10). Some new offshore wind farms in Germany and the Netherlands will even operate without any feed-in subsidies (ibid.). Outside Europe, offshore wind energy is predicted to be sold at a competitive price by the end of the decade (ibid.). Indeed, offshore wind energy has also spread beyond Europe in the last two decades and has been likewise deployed in North America and East Asia. China, in particular, has significantly expanded its installed capacity of offshore wind power ranking second worldwide, only exceeded by the United Kingdom and closely followed by Germany (GWEC 2021: 6). By 2050, Asia as a whole is projected to host 60 % of all installed offshore wind power capacity (IRENA 2019: 10).
The above-mentioned figures demonstrate how our oceans can support us in the generation of electricity from renewable sources like wind. This, in turn, can facilitate the achievement of our climate goals at an acceptable cost level. To halt global warming well below two degrees compared to pre-industrial times, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, the share of energy generation from renewable sources must increase in the coming years at a higher pace (IRENA 2019: 9f.). Offshore wind energy can be an integral part of this development, given that it allows renewable-based energy production without occupying a vast onshore space. Moreover, its quick technological evolution and scaling-up is a promising sign. Not only have wind turbines become much more effective, but there are also a number of innovative concepts on how to improve them and enhance power generation. Ideas range from floating platforms deployed in deeper parts of the sea (IRENA 2019: 11); over combining turbines with solar panels (Hutchins 2021); or the energetic use of wave power (McTiernan and Sharman 2019); to on-site hydrogen production (GWEC 2021: 21).
Still, the opportunities of offshore wind power do not come without challenges: Firstly, there are concerns that offshore wind farms could have an adverse impact on the marine environment, although the precise effects are still to be sufficiently explored (Wehrmann 2018, Berwyn 2017). Secondly, there is also the issue of onshore grid connection, which in the past has often lagged behind the construction of the offshore wind farms themselves (Wehrmann 2020). Ultimately, some countries face the challenge of delivering the generated electricity to the regions further away from the coast. In Germany, for example, offshore wind power can only be generated off the northern German coastline, while major industries like car manufacturing are located in middle and southern Germany. This has been a major issue in the context of the German Energiewende (the German term for the energy transition). A possible solution are high-voltage transmission lines, but they can trigger significant opposition by the public – a phenomenon also known as “not in my backyard” (“NIMBY”) (ibid.).
Thus, offshore wind power is a promising technology that comes with soluble challenges. While my fascination was originally triggered by the amazement of windmills in the middle of the sea, my enthusiasm about offshore wind has not ceased since that evening at the lighthouse. Later on, I could grasp the wider implications of wind power mainly due to the growing concern about climate and single events showing the dangers of other technologies, such as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Finally, among several other opportunities that have not been fully seized yet, offshore wind power is one example of how our oceans can enable us to make our human existence a little more sustainable for the planet.
Sources
Berwyn, Bob (2017). ‘How Do Offshore Wind Farms Affect Ocean Ecosystems?’ Deutsche Welle (DW). https://www.dw.com/en/how-do-offshore-wind-farms-affect-ocean-ecosystems/a-40969339 (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Frangoul, Anmar (2021). ‘Final Phase of “World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm” Will Use GE’s Giant Turbines’. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/last-phase-of-worlds-largest-offshore-wind-farm-to-use-ge-turbines.html (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). 2021. ‘Global Wind Report 2021’. https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GWEC-Global-Wind-Report-2021.pdf (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Hutchins, Mark. 2021. ‘Adding Solar to Offshore Wind’. PV Magazine International. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/03/11/adding-solar-to-offshore-wind/ (accessed: 2 July 2021).
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (2019). ‘Future of Wind: Deployment, Investment, Technology, Grid Integration and Socio-Economic Aspects (A Global Energy Transformation Paper)’. https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Oct/IRENA_Future_of_wind_2019.pdf (accessed: 2 July 2021).
McTiernan, Kaylie L., and Krish Thiagarajan Sharman (2020). ‘Review of Hybrid Offshore Wind and Wave Energy Systems’. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1452: 012016ff.
Ørsted (2019). ‘Making Green Energy Affordable: How the Offshore Wind Energy Industry Matured – and What We Can Learn from It’. https://orsted.com/-/media/WWW/Docs/Corp/COM/explore/Making-green-energy-affordable-June-2019.pdf (accessed: 2 July 2021).
U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy (2021). ‘How Much Power Does A Nuclear Reactor Produce?’ Energy.gov. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Wehrmann, Benjamin (2018). ‘German Offshore Wind Power – Output, Business and Perspectives’. Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/german-offshore-wind-power-output-business-and-perspectives (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Wehrmann, Benjamin (2020). ‘Environmental Concerns Accompany German Offshore Wind Expansion’. Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/environmental-concerns-accompany-german-offshore-wind-expansion (accessed: 2 July 2021).
Jörn-Jakob Luhn is a first year Master student of International Law and member of the Water Initiative at IHEID
Photo and Art by Charlotte Qin of QinTheory Studio
Between Clouds and Oceans is a collaborative series by the Water Initiative and the Geneva-based QinTheory Studio. Water is the origin of all lives but also indispensable to the identity and cosmology of our ancestors. Following where water flows between Clouds and Oceans, the collaboration aims to create an ethnographic collage about water tangential to the international discourse on water governance and natural resource management, and to unlock our long-sought answers to creating peace and living in harmony with one another.
The Graduate Press - La Gazette de la Paix 
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