In marine environment, floating photovoltaic (FPV) plants are subjected to wind, wave and current loadings. Waves are the primary source of fatigue damage for FPVs. The climate change may accumulatively affect the wave conditions, which may result in the overestimation or underestimation of fatigue damage. This paper aims to present a projection method to evaluate the climate change impact on fatigue damage of offshore FPVs in the future. Firstly, climate scenarios are selected to project the global radiative forcing level over decadal or century time scales. Secondly, global climate models are coupled to wind driven wave models to project the long-term sea states in the future. At last, fatigue assessment is conducted to evaluate the impact of climate change on fatigue damage of FPVs. A case study is demonstrated in the North Sea. A global-local method of fatigue calculation is utilized to calculate the annual fatigue damage on the FPVs’ joints. The conclusions indicate that there are decreasing trends of significant wave height and annual fatigue damage in the North Sea with the high emission of greenhouse gases. The fatigue design of FPVs based on the current wave scatter diagrams may be conservative in the future. The manufacture cost of FPVs can be reduced to some extent, which is beneficial to the FPV manufacturers.

Fatigue damage of offshore floating structures is a long-term cumulative process, which is mainly attributed to ocean waves. The natural variability and human-induced climate change may affect the wave climate and consequently result in the change of fatigue damage. This paper aims to investigate the effect of climate change on the fatigue damage of offshore floating structures operating in three offshore oil fields of the North Sea (Alma/Galia, Pierce, and Rosebank oil fields, located in 56.2° N/2.8° E, 58° N/1.45° E, and 61° N/4° W latitude/longitude). Then it can detect whether human-induced climate change has a considerable impact on fatigue damage. Therefore, firstly the natural variability of wave height and fatigue damage was investigated through 30-year control simulations by coupling wave models to climate models, ignoring the effect of human activities. After that the sea states and annual fatigue damages were projected in three decadal periods (2011–2020, 2051–2060, and 2091–2100) based on widely recognized climate scenarios including the greenhouse gas emission trajectories. The effect of human-induced climate change has been detected, and it has been found that the higher the emission, the less the fatigue damage in considered floating structures in the North Sea. In addition, although wave height is the dominant wave characteristic in fatigue calculations, the change of other wave characteristics should also be considered to improve the quality of fatigue designs.