Questionnaire for Offshore Energy Hubs Evaluation
Creators: name: Petersen, Marianne Amalie
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Offshore wind
subject: Offshore Energy Hub
subject: Offshore Energy Island
subject: Green hydrogen
subject: Large-scale offshore energy projects
subject: Large-scale offshore energy hubs
subject: Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
subject: Triple Bottom Line
subject: Quadruple Bottom Line
subject: Renewable Energy
subject: Renewable resource
subject: Renewable energy
subject: Renewable energy source
subject: Renewable Energy/economics
subject: renewable electricity

description: The climate change crisis is no longer a question of if, but when. In an initiative-taking move to reduce CO2 emissions, the Danish government has launched two offshore energy hubs initiatives that, if successful, can change the way energy is produced, delivered, and evaluated. Uncertainties in green electricity and green hydrogen production technologies, coupled with the lack of quantification of the societal value, make it difficult to quantify the benefits of large-scale offshore energy hubs.

Currently, the implementation details of these hubs remain unsure, reflecting the innovative and evolving nature of this field. Offshore energy hubs themselves are envisioned as large-scale installations capable of harnessing renewable energies from offshore wind to produce both electricity and green hydrogen. These hubs aim to centralize the production and distribution of sustainable energy, minimizing environmental impact while maximizing efficiency. As these projects move from concept to reality, they navigate complex challenges, including technology integration, environmental concerns, and regulatory frameworks, all of which must be addressed to realize their full potential in the fight against climate change.

To understand and be able to explain the optimal electricity and green hydrogen production pathways it is important to account for complex energy system and long-term investment, including uncertainties, expected market mechanisms, long-term planning, operational issues, and broader sustainability objectives. Therefore, is this questionnaire developed with engagement from industry experts, to collect data using a Multi-Criteria Decision framework. The questionnaire contains a set of indicators that have emerged as important factors across the areas of environmental impact, economic evaluation, technology development, and societal requirements. 

The process of the questionnaire is to rank the indicators based on their relevance using a scale of 0-5 (0 meaning “not relevant” and 5 meaning “most relevant”). There is also an option to select "I don't know" for all indicators. Additionally, there is a comment field provided for each indicator in case further qualitative information is needed.The developed questionnaire is meant for more data collection for an investigation ongoing or future research. If data is collected using this questionnaire, then it will be appreciated if the data is also provided to the owner.

For this study, an offshore energy hub is defined as: A central place used for collection and distribution of various offshore produced energy carriers from and to multiple destinations.