Abstract
Smyth et al. (2015) present a detailed consideration of the ecological, societal, economic and regulatory aspects of wind farm decommissioning in the marine environment. The result is a consolidated base of information that will hopefully assist managers and the industry to prepare for the decommissioning phase. However, the analyses used to compare the two decommissioning options (partial and complete removal) are not sufficient to identify the best-performing option, nor do they provide a structured method for incorporating stakeholder values into the decision process. While we suspect the authors’ motives were to provide a general comparison for use as a guide, rather than an exact method to be implemented in specific decommissioning cases, future use of their methods may result in sub-optimal outcomes for both society and the marine environment. Smyth et al. (2015) also propose a large-scale ‘renewables-to-reefs’ program based on the outcomes of their analyses, which is premature given the lack of rigorous comparison between the two options. We therefore use this comment to outline the above issues with Smyth et al.’s (2015) methods and propose a more rigorous approach for wind farm decommissioning decisions based on multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA). The approach has recently been developed to optimize decommissioning decisions for offshore oil and gas infrastructure (see Fowler et al., 2014), which share many of the environmental and social considerations of wind farms, as well as similar decision challenges.