Addressing heterogeneity in the development of circular economy strategies in the offshore wind industry: A review.

To mitigate the impact of climate change, a transition to renewables in the energy sector is needed. Offshore wind energy is a promising renewable technology that is developing at an unprecedented rate. However, the offshore wind industry is material intensive, and there are concerns about its end-of-life strategies and that we might end up exchanging a climate challenge with a material challenge. The question is whether there are available, mature, and commercially viable solutions for offshore wind companies that want to adopt a circular economy. This study offers an exhaustive review of the academic literature on eight existing and emerging circular economy strategies for the offshore wind industry - lifetime extension, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, repurposing, modularisation, repowering and recycling, and classifying them according to the technology readiness levelstrategy assessment framework. The systematic literature review identified 66 relevant articles using two databases and a keyword search. The main conclusion is that the circular economy in the offshore wind industry is an under-researched, underdeveloped field with great heterogeneity in the development of circular economy strategies. This heterogeneity is caused by wide variation in the country and region-specific development of circular economy strategies, policy and regulatory factors, economic viability, and lack of knowledge. We also find that the circular economy strategies with potentially the best environmental outcome are the ones that are furthest from market maturity and commercial viability.