Revisiting offshore wind energy economics through risk-adjusted LCOE under extreme winds

Achieving the temperature control and net-zero targets remains the one of the most urgent global challenges in addressing climate change since Paris Agreement. Offshore wind power is expanding rapidly worldwide, however, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme high wind events (EHWEs) driven by climate change are exposing growing physical and economic vulnerabilities of offshore wind infrastructure. Current planning and policy frameworks primarily rely on long-term mean wind statistics and socio-economic indicators, and typically assume that turbines operate reliably throughout their design lifetime. This neglects the cumulative impacts of extreme wind events on turbine integrity, lifetime energy production, and project economics, leading to a systematic underestimation of climate-related risks.

Here we propose an integrated meteorological–engineering–economic framework to quantify the impacts of EHWE on offshore wind energy systems. The framework introduces an Extreme-wind-adjusted levelized cost of energy (EW-LCOE) that links extreme wind hazards, turbine vulnerability, and lifecycle economic performance. Historical EHWEs are identified as the primary risk drivers, and probabilistic damage relationships are used to estimate turbine lifetime and energy losses under extreme wind forcing. Applying this framework to China’s coastal exclusive economic zone reveals strong spatial heterogeneity in EHWE-driven offshore wind risk. The frequency and intensity of extreme wind events generally increase from nearshore to offshore regions, leading to marked spatial differences in turbine lifetime and economic performance. In EHWE-prone regions, recurrent extreme wind events substantially shorten the turbine lifetimes and reduce the lifetime energy yields. Accounting for extreme-wind effects reveals that EW-LCOE in the most vulnerable areas is 5–6 times higher than conventional LCOE estimates, indicating a severe overestimation of offshore wind economic viability when extreme-wind risks are ignored.

By explicitly translating extreme climate hazards into turbine failure risk, lifetime energy losses, and economic costs, this study provides a physically and economically consistent basis for offshore wind planning under climate change. Our results demonstrate that average wind resource metrics alone are insufficient for evaluating offshore wind viability in extreme wind–prone regions, and that turbine resilience to extreme events should be integrated into next-generation offshore wind deployment and investment decisions.