Elsevier

Marine Pollution Bulletin

Volume 98, Issues 1–2, 15 September 2015, Pages 368-371
Marine Pollution Bulletin

Correspondence
Renewables-to-reefs: Participatory multicriteria decision analysis is required to optimize wind farm decommissioning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.07.002Get rights and content

Section snippets

Decision dilemmas

Smyth et al. (2015) use two main analyses to compare between decommissioning options for wind farms: a SWOT analysis and a comparison of ecosystem services provision. SWOT analyses are simply a list of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that the user(s) can identify for each option. Although they are useful for understanding the range of considerations involved in a decision, and allow a qualitative comparison of ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ between options, they fail to sum up the

Stakeholder participation

Smyth et al. (2015) note the importance of stakeholder participation in wind farm decommissioning, yet do not suggest a process by which such participation should occur. Approaches to stakeholder participation should be considered early on in any discourse relating to offshore decommissioning, because early stakeholder engagement is essential for effective participation in environmental decisions (Reed, 2008) and methods of stakeholder participation must be tailored to suit the particular

Participatory multicriteria decision analysis

Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is fast becoming the benchmark for optimizing environmental decisions. MCDA refers to a suite of methods that allow decision-makers to assess and compare the performance of alternative options across multiple, potentially competing, considerations (criteria). Importantly, MCDA can handle the complex series of trade-offs generated when no single option performs best overall; a scenario which seems likely for wind farm decommissioning (Smyth et al., 2015).

Conclusions

Although offshore wind farms will not reach the decommissioning phase for a decade or more, planning for decommissioning decisions and stakeholder consideration should begin now. Lessons should be learned from the offshore oil and gas industry, which is currently struggling with the aftermath of poor decision processes during the decommissioning phase. The lack of appropriate decision support tools and inadequate stakeholder involvement have resulted in a hostile decommissioning environment,

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