Perspectives on offshore wind farms development in Great Lakes

Article history Received: 4 March 2020 Accepted: 2 April 2020 Published Online: 31 October 2020 Global warming emissions and carbon dioxide caused by human activities are overloading our atmosphere which cause web of significant and harmful impacts. There are little to no global warming emissions by renewable energy. To date, offshore wind farms generally have been installed in shallow ocean-coastal areas. The Great Lakes with freshwater have shown high potential for installing offshore wind farms, and significant advantages. There are more than 5 offshore windfarms in progress at the end of 2019 in Great Lakes. The object of this study is to present the capacity and prospects of offshore wind farms development in Great Lakes. Also, the power of wind farms, barriers, issues, wind vision, advantages and disadvantages, the criteria related to the location of the offshore wind farms in Great Lakes have been analyzed and presents statistics for decision-makers, interested communities, investors and academic researchers. This paper is among the rare works that have been done in aspect of statistical and data gathering for the wind offshore in Great Lakes as the moratorium in the 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. The research has been conducted based on the analysis of acts, regulations, the subject’s literature and information from websites.