What are the potential effects of floating offshore wind on marine ecosystems?

26 November 2024

Plymouth Marine Laboratory is a leading partner in a new programme focused on enhancing understanding of how UK marine ecosystems may respond to future expansion of floating offshore windfarms (FLOW).

In response to concerns over climate change and energy security, there are ambitious targets for the expansion of offshore renewable energy. This expansion includes the development of floating offshore windfarms (FLOW) in deeper water environments, and currently there is limited evidence on how the marine environment may be affected.

Two new pioneering projects, named EQUIFy and FrontLine, have been chosen to address the challenges set by NERC: Natural Environment Research Council and The Crown Estate research programme ‘Ecological Effects of Floating Offshore Wind (ECOFlow) ‘. This programme is focused on delivering the critical evidence needs of government and industry required to inform policy and decision making on planned large-scale expansion of FLOW.

PML is leading the ‘Establishing a Framework for Quantifiable Evidence and Impact of Ecosystem Change Throughout the Lifecycle of UK Floating Offshore Wind Farms (EQUIFy)’ project, which aims to establish a framework for quantifiable evidence and impacts of ecosystem change throughout the lifecycle of UK floating offshore wind farms.

EQUIFy will use an array of modelling approaches, autonomous monitoring systems and decision support tools to provide a transferable evidence framework that improves current understanding of the likely future effects of FLOW, with a focus on planned developments in the Celtic Sea. It will deliver new tools and knowledge over a range of scales, from individual turbines to the whole of the UK shelf seas and beyond, and importantly, will provide this understanding within the context of a changing climate and under the changing use of our seas that upscaling FLOW will undoubtedly drive. This will help deliver the tools required to aid quicker and more effective decision-making to accelerate the consenting process.

Professor Matthew Palmer , project lead for EQUIFy and Head of Science for Digital Innovation & Marine Autonomy at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, commented:

“EQUIFy brings together expertise from across engineering, environmental and social sciences to build on the best emerging knowledge of how current wind farms are effecting our seas. Through co-development with stakeholders, we will then deliver new modelling and monitoring capabilities that are urgently required to understand how future upscaling of offshore wind and the move to floating turbines in deeper waters will impact the marine environment at all scales, establishing new evidence on ecosystem sensitivity to change, and considering how resulting ecological effects have the potential to reinforce or offset changes from other pressures, such as from fishing, transport and climate change. Our work will focus on consolidating such knowledge to deliver decision support tools to underpin future UK growth and leadership in a sustainable and equitable Green Energy transition”.

The second project, ‘Impacts of FLOW on Celtic Sea Ocean Fronts and Biodiversity (Frontline)’, led by 英国赫瑞瓦特大学 and involving PML scientists, will deliver new insights into the way that FLOW development can have ecosystem-level impacts, improve the evidence basis for quantifying ecological impacts and offer new ways to promote nature recovery and sustainability.

Frontline will combine existing and new datasets to quantify currently unknown FLOW consequences on offshore marine ecosystems, with a focus on ocean fronts. Satellite remote-sensing algorithms developed by PML and autonomous vehicles will enable a mechanistic understanding of front formation and determine their impact on plankton and fish in the Celtic Sea, and how this might change in the presence of FLOW infrastructure. The project will also examine how some marine organisms use fronts to find food and how this might change with the construction of FLOW; explore the use of fronts as sites for nature recovery; facilitate coexistence with other marine users (e.g. fisheries), and deliver a baseline for long-term monitoring against a backdrop of accelerated ocean warming and spatial squeeze.

Frontline lead scientist, Prof Steve Votier , said:

“I am delighted to be able to work with a diverse and very lovely group of scientists to deliver cutting-edge science in the pursuit of an improved understanding of marine renewable impacts on ocean process by focussing on ocean fronts. Fronts are vitally important marine habitats where different water masses meet creating the conditions for ecological hotspots from the top to the bottom of the food web. Our team’s expertise spans oceanography, remote sensing (via satellites and remotely operated vehicles), fisheries science and ocean predator behaviour. With a focus on the Celtic Sea, we will develop a mechanistic understanding of fronts and how they impact globally important seabird and marine mammal communities, as well as commercially valuable fisheries, and how such relationships might be impacted by FLOW infrastructure”.

Dr Peter Miller , a Principal Earth Observation Scientist at PML and part of the Frontline team, added:

“I look forward to the remote sensing challenge of characterising and tracking dynamic fronts in the Celtic Sea, as this will connect the strands of this interdisciplinary project. We will look at all shelf-sea fronts near the FLOW sites, in near-real time to guide the autonomous underwater vehicles’ sampling plans, and historically for seabird foraging studies”.

The two projects will move at pace, beginning by meeting with relevant stakeholders, forming partnerships with the offshore wind industry to aid their research efforts, and producing policy-conscious research plans for the next four years.

If you would like to learn more about the programme or find out how to get involved, get in touch at [email protected] . You can find out more about ECOFlow and the two projects on the ECOFlow website .