Perspectives on offshore wind farms development in Great Lakes

Abstract

Our atmosphere is overloading with carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions due to human activities. It causes a web of significant and harmful impacts. Renewable energy resources produce little to no global warming emissions. To date, most of the existing offshore wind farms have been deployed in shallow ocean-coastal areas. The salinity of the ocean averages approximately 35 percent. The Great Lakes with freshwater have shown high potential for installing offshore wind farms, and significant advantages. In this study, the potential capacity for installing offshore wind farms in Great Lakes is discussed based on the wind pattern and speed. Also, it includes the barriers, issues, wind vision, advantages and disadvantages, the most appropriate locations for erecting the offshore wind farms in Great Lakes, updated offshore wind farms, and statistics for decision-makers, interested communities and investors. This paper is among the rare works that have been done in aspect of statistical and data for the wind offshore in Great Lakes as the moratorium in Canadian side and the difficulties in obtaining permissions in the American side put the offshore wind sector on pause for a long time, and recently (since 2016) it started to get some momentum.