National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » EWEA Offshore: Decommissioning costs underestimated

DENMARK: The wind industry has underestimated the potential costs of decommissioning offshore wind projects, DNV GL head of offshore renewables Elaine Greig has warned.

Speaking to Windpower TV, Greig said there has been a tendency to downplay potential complications relating to the decommissioning of projects at the end of their lives.

“Decommssioning in the offshore wind industry has been a long way away, so people have looked at it as the reverse of installation, so let’s put a percentage on it and not worry about it too much,” she said.

“But as we’ve started to do studies into decommissioning and how it’s actually going to work and the problems that are going to come up, it’s potentially more costly than people thought. We have to cater to that and include it in the lifecycle of costs.”

The answer, she argued, is to look to the oil and gas industry and their extensive experience in decommissioning major infrastructure at sea.

“The main learnings from the oil and gas sector are the environmental considerations that you have to take into account,” she said. “You may have put in steel, but you may be taking something out that is filled with toxic gas, and that’s something we need to look at – what they’ve had to deal with, and the things we may have to deal with too.”