Luengo Frades, J.; García Barba, J.; Negro, V.; Martín-Antón, M., and Soriano, J., 2020. Blue economy: Compatibility between the increasing offshore wind technology and the achievement of the SDG. In: Malvárez, G. and Navas, F. (eds.), Global Coastal Issues of 2020. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 95, pp. 1490–1494. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.In 2015, the UN impulsed an ambitious initiative called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), including 17 Goals and 169 Targets, to be accomplished in the 2015-2030 period. At the same time, offshore wind industry has taken the great leap towards the ocean. Such wind farms hold more and more wind turbines (>100), depths increase leaving shallow waters (almost 100 m deep), and the power installed is increasing at a dramatic rate not thought to be possible only one decade ago (currently reaching 400 MW). These facts are ones of the great advances of the XXI century, but so far, it has not been done a deep reflection on the impact of the offshore wind on the aforementioned SDG, and on how the offshore wind is going to accomplish all the challenges happening when trying to reach such SDG. The achievement of some of the SDG and the offshore wind technology progress go, with no doubt, hand in hand. This is the case of Goal 12 (Responsible consumption and production), Goal 13 (Climate action), or Goal 14 (Life below water). But there are also other SDG that deserve a special attention, in order to ensure that offshore wind power technology effectively will contribute to reach them, and will not, on the contrary, act to the detriment of them. This is the case of Goal 7 (Affordable and clean energy), Goal 8 (Decent work and economic growth), or Goal 10 (Reducing inequalities). In this paper, the great contribution of the offshore wind technology to achieve the SDG is commented, making special emphasis on the possible weaknesses that could appear, and on how to solve them. All of it to make by 2030 the world, in general, and the energy in particular, become more blue.

Estimation of wave run-up has been of increasing concern for offshore wind structures and a critical aspect for designers. The highly nonlinear phenomenon makes the study difficult. That is the reason for the very few design rules and experimental data available to estimate it. Actual wave run-up is greater than commonly predicted. The goal of this research is to benchmark the theoretical formulations with the results of the physical model tests performed by Deltares in the field of crest elevation, run-up, forces and pressures. The laboratory reproduced in a wave tank (75 m length; 8.7 m width; 1 m depth; and a 1:60 scale, with Froude similarity) an offshore power converter platform located at intermediate water depths (25–43.80 m) in the Southern North Sea, designed by the Norwegian company Aibel. The purpose of this research is to offer a preliminary design guide for wave run–up using theoretical expressions both for cylinders and gravity based structures (GBS), leaning on the cited laboratory tests to validate the results obtained by such theoretical models.

The analysis of the soil behavior when the pile is driving into the seabed in offshore wind platforms is one of the major problems associated with this new form of clean energy generation. At present, there are no scaled studies carried out analyzing the mechanical and deformational behavior of both the material of the pile supporting the engine (large steel hollow piles with a diameter of 8 m and a thickness of 15–20 cm) and the soil where the pile is driven. Usually, these elements are installed on sands with a very small grain size displaced from the limits of dry–wet beach (water limit) toward the offshore limits, which prevents them from returning to their previous location in a natural way. This paper presents results obtained from scale tests in a steel pool to analyze the behavior of the sand where the piles were installed. First, the California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test was carried out to estimate the soil behavior in similar conditions to the steel pool. The scale tests consisted of the penetration of the steel tube into the sand using a hydraulic press. The objective was to compare the results for three tubes with different diameters, three different speeds, and two kinds of ending on the extreme of the tested element.