Abstract
The purpose of this life cycle assessment (LCA) was to illuminate and describe the potential environmental impacts caused by an offshore wind turbine farm (WTF) throughout its lifetime and use this knowledge in the planning and improvement of future WTFs. The LCA was based on experience from the LCA on Danish electricity and district heating as well as the offshore WTF project at Middelgrunden which is in operation.
LCA of a wind turbine is not new, however, development in the area of wind turbines at sea and transmission of the electricity from the offshore WTF is new, and therefore, focus on the advantages and disadvantages in comparison to wind turbines on land is necessary. Data from the current wind turbine project, Middelgrunden, near Copenhagen, was collected from SEAS’ wind energy center and the other participating organizations and extrapolated in order to reflect the offshore WTF at Nysted/Roedsand. Nysted/Roedsand is expected to be in operation by the year 2003.