Maritime spatial planning (MSP) is a mechanism of supporting adaptive decision making in response to possible conflicts over offshore wind turbine locations. The main purpose of this study is to determine the location of potential offshore wind turbine sites in the Northern Aegean Sea in Turkey by creating a geographical information systems-based marine spatial planning system for the region. A decision model has been proposed in which GIS and multi-criteria decision-making techniques are used to determine alternative areas. While the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was utilized to identify viable sites based on several essential physical factors in this study, the Fuzzy TOPSIS approach was used to compare the Gökçeada, Bozcaada, and Enez study regions and find the optimal area. In the final stage, the areas where offshore wind turbine's locations are calculated are energy and exergy efficiency.
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According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (2013) the use of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal, which meet a large part of the energy demand, has increased significantly in the last century (Ritchie et al., 2020). However, using these fuels increase the average world temperature, reduces the ozone layer and pollutes nature and the environment (Rosati, 2017). The climate crisis caused by these impacts has created significant environmental problems in the world (Shivanna, 2022). Increases in the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities cause global warming. Since greenhouse gases come predominantly from energy production, where energy comes from and how it is consumed has become a critical issue in climate policy (IPCC, 2018). The energy sector, which causes two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, plays a crucial role in achieving climate protection targets. Sengul et al. (2014) have stated that the environmental impact and exhaustibility of fossil fuels have led people to move to renewable energy sources that are environmentally friendly and do not have a limited lifespan. These are natural sources of energy, the source of which does not depend on any substance, and most of them are formed by the deformation of solar energy (Holechek et al., 2022).
British Petroleum (2020) reported that the most significant increase in the desire to use renewable energy globally, which has grown significantly, includes wind energy, hydropower, solar energy, geothermal energy, hydrogen energy, wave energy, and biomass energy. Wind energy, which stands out from the European Union (EU) perspective, is an essential resource with its environmentally friendly nature and sustainability. In recent years, due to the high potential of wind energy systems, it has been the subject of many research studies in wind turbine energy, exergy, and economic analysis.
Regarding the determinations for the current status, potential and future availability of wind energy worldwide, 2020 has been the best year for the global wind industry, with 53% annual growth and 93 GW of new capacity installed. As of today, 743 GW of wind energy capacity is being used worldwide. New annual installations are expected to exceed 20 GW in 2025 and 30 GW in 2030, with the global offshore wind market growing at an average annual growth rate of 18.6% by 2024 and 8.2% by the end of the decade. Following “World Forum Offshore Wind” (2020) in 2019, with offshore wind turbines accounting for 10% of global new wind power installations, over 205 GW of new offshore wind capacity was expected to be added to the global offshore wind sector over the next decade.