Environmental impacts and benefits of marine floating solar

Abstract

Deployment of floating solar photovoltaic installations (floatovoltaics) is advancing, with various designs beginning to appear in a range of marine environments. Insight from freshwater floatovoltaics is not readily transferable offshore, and so lessons from other marine energy infrastructure are used to highlight how the marine environment may impact floatovoltaics, how the floatovoltaics impact the environment (both positively and negatively) and the likely societal response. It becomes clear that research to understand the environmental and societal implications of floating solar in the marine environment must proceed in parallel with investigations of the technical and economic feasibility.