EMC Working Papers

The fundamental idea of this technical paper is to understand the feasibility and present the robustness of removing the need to decommission an offshore jacket and instead installing an offshore wind tower (with nacelle, rotor blades and generator) on top of it, thereby saving the costs of decommissioning as well as entirely removing the need to design, build and install a substructure for the new offshore wind tower. The economics of scalability are particularly interesting.

Platform life extensions are second nature to the offshore oil and gas industry and hence do not call for massive technological advances to be put to immediate use. The feasibility and installation of a new offshore wind tower on an existing jacket structure can be easily checked by the same conventional process of “offshore topside-jacket mating.”

The concept of this study is born from the need to urgently realise the role that Oil and Gas companies can and should play in the transition to renewable energy systems. Hence, the use and potential reuse of existing oil and gas assets is, in the author's opinion, the fastest way to hit the ground running.  

Research Topics: Climate Change and the Environment Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility