Wind turbines can breathe new life into our warming seas

Photo credit: Ian Dyball / shutterstock. Article by Ben Lincoln, Robert Dorrell and Tom Rippeth. The Conversation – March 4, 2022.

Offshore wind is set to move further and further from shore, as demand for renewable energy grows and new floating turbine technology makes deep-water expansion possible. However, for the first time, large areas of the UK continental shelf now open for development are “seasonally stratified”. David Attenborough has described these seasonal seas as some of the most biologically productive on the planet. While they only cover 7% of the ocean, they are estimated to account for somewhere between 10% and 30% of the life at the bottom of the food web.

According to our new research, one byproduct of deep-sea wind farming is that the foundations of these floating turbines could help reverse the damaging effects of climate change on such seas. […]

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