Life cycle thinking methodologies for sustainability assessment of offshore wind power production

Abstract

The rapid growth of offshore wind energy requires a sustainability assessment beyond operational emissions, covering impacts across the entire life cycle and across the environmental, social, and economic dimensions. This study systematically reviews scientific articles for environmental life cycle assessment, social life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, life cycle sustainability assessment, and circularity of offshore wind power publications from 2014 to 2025, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework. Across the environmental impacts, the upstream life cycle stages, such as materials and manufacturing, construction and installation, have consistently emerged, particularly in climate change. This is mainly due to the material intensity of manufacturing and construction phases, including steel, concrete, and glass fibers used in the turbines. The operation and maintenance impacts are generally reported as a smaller contributor. The biodiversity indicators are more frequently associated with the operational and marine site-specific scenarios. The reviewed studies for social life cycle assessments have mainly been on the impacts on workers, fisheries, and the coastal communities, highlighting that labour rights, health, and safety issues are matters throughout the life cycle. The reviewed literature on life cycle costing mostly reported the levelized cost of energy, with manufacturing phases contributing approximately 46-64% of the total costs in the industry. Literature on life cycle sustainability assessment is very scarce and methodologically heterogeneous. However, decision-support studies use life-cycle indicators as inputs to multi-criteria decision analysis to rank alternatives across environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The circularity analysis highlights the challenges of end-of-life, particularly for wind blade recycling and material recovery. The existing methods assess strategies extending the lifespan, upgrading, and decommissioning operations through material recovery and circularity.