Greetings dear readers!
Today, I bring tidings of offshore wind farms and how they impact the environment!
Offshore wind farms have turbines rising out of the sea like giant trees.
Last year, the top three countries with the most wind farms out at sea were namely China, the UK and Germany. China has almost 40% of the global share of offshore wind, which probably contributes greatly to its rapidly increasing wind power capacity. Building wind farms in the water has some benefits such as wind being more available and at higher speeds out at sea, allowing for more electricity to be generated. They also free up land for use since wind turbines need to be at least 7 times the diameter of the rotor apart, causing onshore wind farms to require a significant amount of space. As you can probably guess, these wind farms can also pose threats to the environment, such as emissions from the construction and transportation of the wind turbines as mentioned in my previous post.
Other than greenhouse gas emissions, possible threats to seabirds are an issue as, similar to land wind farms, birds could accidentally hit turbines while flying. However, research has shown that many bird species tend to avoid offshore wind farms. There are some that do fly near or through the wind farms, but there is a very low chance that they will hit the turbines as they fly far away from the turbines. In some cases, birds are attracted to the wind farms as there is more prey available for them there caused by the turbine’s foundation material providing a different habitat for marine life. This could mean that the risk of collisions would increase if the density of seabirds within the wind farm increases, but on the other hand, they could just fly beneath the rotors near the sea. Since the turbines are so tall and there is so much space in between them, I think the birds would be able to catch prey without a high chance of collision with the turbines.
On the topic of marine biodiversity, sea life within and around offshore wind farms could be affected by noise pollution (remember this?). When building the wind farm, ensuring that the wind turbines stay in place through a process called pile-driving generates a large amount of noise which can be heard up to 70km away from the wind farm. This could affect marine mammals including harbour seals, porpoises, dolphins and whales. However, during the electricity generation phase, noise pollution is unlikely to be harmful to them, which is a relief as their communication will not be covered up. ε-(´・｀)
As this post is getting quite long, I will continue to elaborate on the impacts of offshore wind farms in my next post.
See you next time! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ
~Rayzel