 Offshore wind capital cost estimation in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf—A reference class approachMark J. Kaiser and Brian Snyder Marine Policy, 2012, vol. 36, issue 5, 1112-1122 Abstract: Offshore wind power developed rapidly in Northern Europe in the first decade of the 21st century and is expected to spread to Southern Europe, North America and Asia before 2020. To date, no projects have been built offshore North America because of the high development costs and economic risk and uncertain profitability. The purpose of this paper is to review the development cost of constructing offshore wind farms to inform the U.S. market. The capital expenditures of a reference class of 18 European wind farms constructed after 2005 with monopile foundations are normalized to proxy U.S. capital cost. Regression models are developed to investigate the physical features that influence expenditures. U.S. capital costs are expected to range between $4 and $5.6 million/MW for projects built between 2012 and 2015. Capital costs increase with increasing water depth and steel prices. For most farm components, capital expenditures are expected to be similar in Europe and the U.S., but the installation markets differ and this may impact the reliability of the reference class approach. Keywords: Offshore wind; Capital costs; Reference class forecasting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:36:y:2012:i:5:p:1112-1122 DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2012.02.001 Access Statistics for this article Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier |
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