Energy-food nexus in the marine environment: A macroeconomic analysis on offshore wind energy and seafood production in Scotland

Yang Qu, Tara Hooper, J. Kim Swales, Eleni Papathanasopoulou, Melanie C. Austen and Xiaoyu Yan

Energy Policy, 2021, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: The rapid development of offshore wind farms (OWFs) has stimulated debate about its overall socioeconomic impacts. Expanding the scale of OWFs increases the availability and affordability of electricity but could displace existing fishing activities and reduce food supply. To evaluate these impacts from a macroeconomic perspective, a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is developed, using Scotland as a case study. A particular focus is placed on the disaggregated electricity and seafood sectors, their interconnectedness from an energy-food nexus perspective, and the distributional effects across household groups. This paper explores, from macroeconomic perspective, the trade-offs in the energy-food nexus between expanding OWFs and the seafood sectors, together with the impacts on food and energy security. The results suggest that, through economic linkages, increasing the number of OWFs would have a negative, but limited, effect on seafood production sectors. However, the falling cost of electricity from OWFs would have a positive impact on the economy overall and benefit lower income households, contributing to a reduction in fuel poverty. The model results raise the awareness of nexus linkages between OWFs and seafood production and are applicable to policies involving the development of other offshore renewables.

Keywords: Energy-food nexus; Offshore wind energy; Computable general equilibrium model; Fuel poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520307382
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:149:y:2021:i:c:s0301421520307382

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.112027

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().