Development of offshore wind power and foundation technology for offshore wind turbines in China

Abstract

The government of China has committed to bring carbon dioxide emissions to a peak before 2030 and to achieve carbon neutral before 2060 to tackle climate change. Renewable energy plays a key role in the energy strategy of China in order to achieve the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring energy security. China has abundant offshore wind resource, distributed along its 18,000 km long coastline and 6000 islands. The first offshore wind farm of China was built in 2008 and put into operation in 2010. It provided green energy for 2010 Shanghai World Expo and then launched an era of offshore wind power development in the coastal areas adjacent to highly populated regions. Over the last decades, many thousands wind turbines have been installed, with an accumulated installed capacity of over 13 GW. This paper reviews the development of offshore wind power and foundation technology used for offshore wind turbines in China using published information, data, and web sources. An ongoing offshore wind farm project is taken as an example to describe the foundation technologies involved.