COMPASS

Context:

Developing Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs) affects the environment and socio-economic systems both positively and negatively. To meet sustainability requirements, it is crucial to holistically evaluate these impacts across all scales and life phases of existing and future OWFs. Although many modeling tools exist to assess different types of impacts individually, the development of a holistic integrated tool is lacking. COMPASS (Comprehensive Offshore Management Platform for Assessing Sustainability) will provide an innovative and holistic understanding of both global and local cumulative impacts of OWF. By combining life-cycle based environmental, economic and social tools and an OWF digital twin, COMPASS will leverage their mutual advantages to assess OWF project sustainability.  These tools will be integrated in a user-friendly, customizable, decision-support platform.

Objectives and approach:

• Work closely with OWF developers, experts, authorities, NGOs and local communities to ensure the platform meets realistic needs, is relevant, and improves the overall sustainability of the offshore wind industry.

• Advance environmental and social impact assessment for offshore wind by tailoring and improving Life Cycle Assessment, Social LCA and Life Cycle Costing to the specificities of OWFs.

• Develop an integrated socio-ecosystem framework that combines life-cycle methods, ecosystem models, socio-economic analysis and ecosystem services to capture cumulative impacts of OWFs.

• Build a modular, adaptive decision-support platform that can be configured for different sea basins, technologies, data availability and user profiles, reducing the time needed for robust sustainability assessments.

• Provide multi-criteria design recommendations to minimise negative environmental and social impacts while maximising economic and societal benefits, including nature-inclusive options and circular strategies.

Expected Impact:

• A comprehensive decision-support platform enabling more sustainable, cost-effective, and socially responsible offshore wind deployment across Europe.

• COMPASS will improve the understanding on the negative and positive impacts of OWF aiming for a reduction of global environmental impacts by 20% and overall economic and local socio-ecosystem optimization by 15%.

• By improving transparency and sustainability, COMPASS contributes to improve the overall sustainability of the offshore wind industry.

Funding:

COMPASS is fully funded by the European Union

EU Grant: ~5 M€ (100% funding ratio)

Framework:

Call: HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-02 (Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply)

Topic: HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-02-08

Type of Action: HORIZON-RIA