The world needs hundreds of thousands more offshore wind turbines – where will they all go?

To reach net zero, the world may need as many 200,000 offshore wind turbines generating 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of energy. To put this in context, by the end of 2022, 63 GW of offshore wind capacity had been installed worldwide. Within the next 28 years, the offshore wind energy sector needs to expand so that it is capable of producing 32 times its current energy capacity. But where do we put all these extra offshore wind farms? Their locations will need to be chosen in order to maximise their energy output and their social benefits, while ensuring they have the minimum impact possible on the environment. Balancing all these factors is not a straightforward task.

Hugo Putuhena and colleagues at the University of Southampton provide some insights and answers to this question in a recent article for The Conversation. You can read the article in full here.