How to produce offshore energy without harming the oceans Offshore wind capacity will need to be increased across the world to meet international climate commitments, but with as little harm as possible to wildlife. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Turbines of a wind farm lay in the wake of a maintenance boat in the mouth of the River Mersey. “No landscape on Earth is safe” if the fight against climate change “trumps all other environmental concerns,” wrote the US novelist Jonathan Franzen in 2015. Perhaps nowhere is the pressure between climate action and protecting nature so great as in the world’s oceans, where commercial and military activities add further sources of tension. Experts believe the oceans can supply around 10 per cent of the world’s electricity by 2050 without destroying “the largest habitat on Earth”, but environmentalists and clean energy advocates admit trade-offs are likely to be needed.