Future global offshore wind energy under climate change and advanced wind turbine technology

Offshore wind energy provides a promising option for substituting conventional energies due to its low greenhouse gas emissions, cost-effectiveness, and abundant wind resources at seas. The installed capacity, available area, technological advancements, and wind resource development under climate change drive the offshore wind potential. Thus, the goal is to develop 28 techno-climatic wind energy expansion scenarios, considering installed capacity expansion paths and potential wind farm sites to estimate the national and global wind energy yield in 2025-2054. The study tests the hypothesis that technological advancements are more influential for future offshore wind energy yield compared to climate-related wind resource changes. Globally, at more than 80 % of studied sites, the capacity factors significantly decrease under all evaluated climate change scenarios in 2025-2054. However, it should not hinder future offshore wind expansion since the climate change-induced wind resource change is far less than the capacity factor variability of the potential wind farm sites within the exclusive economic zones. This study also found that if the wind energy expansion continues at the same pace as in 2019-2023 until 2030, China could gain the highest average energy yield at 280.9 TWh annually. Besides, the results indicate that the wind turbine type is more critical to the capacity factor than the climate change impact. At 87.9 % of all evaluated sites, the 10 MW reference wind turbine yields the highest capacity factors out of seven reference wind turbines tested.