Larger turbines and more frequent extreme wind events are pushing conventional onshore wind foundations beyond efficient and sustainable limits. Current designs rely on oversized concrete foundations, leading to high costs, increased embodied carbon, fatigue issues, and challenging inspection and repair.
Strathclyde conducted a systematic literature review and comparative case analysis. Literature review reveals that offshore wind farms do not produce uniform or unavoidably negative impacts on tourism, but rather a mix of positive, negative, and context-dependent effects. Case analysis suggests strongly negative responses from tourists are limited and predominately appear mainly during construction and early operational phases.
SSE & Scottish Power will explore opportunities to replicate and scale the research across other projects or geographies and will also continue engagement to ensure local perspectives are captured.
Number of Trip Advisor reviews of tourist destinations near Offshore Wind Farms
We are grateful to the project leads and researcher for their rigorous approach which we believe has delivered a high-quality and credible assessment. In all our dealings with the team we have found them approachable and most importantly understanding of the issues. At each stage they have provided us with a clear presentation of their findings and been responsive to our feedback. This has been a smooth and productive partnership to deliver what we hope will be a valuable piece of work.