Marine

£3m joint industry programme to accelerate the deployment of the UK offshore wind programme

December 4, 2013 by Paul Stainer No Comments | Category Marine Directorate Science, Marine Renewables

The Carbon Trust’s offshore wind accelerator (OWA) has been commissioned by the leading offshore wind developers in the UK, The Crown Estate, Marine Scotland and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to form the Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Programme (ORJIP). The programme has been created to reduce the consenting risks for large-scale offshore wind farms during the Round 3 and Scottish Territorial Waters processes and beyond.

The programme will see £3m of public and private sector funding invested in research over the next three years. The work will generate scientific evidence to provide greater certainty on the potential environmental impacts of offshore wind developments, in order to reduce consenting risks for developers. This work is important for future offshore wind developments from 2017 onwards.

ORJIP will initially focus on two work streams, namely:

• Bird collision risk and avoidance rate monitoring
• Investigating the use of deterrent devices and injury avoidance mitigation for marine mammals during piling works

The programme also aims to identify and run further research projects to de-risk offshore renewables project applications, which may include topics such as:

• Evidence gathering for a population consequences of acoustic disturbance model for marine mammals
• Underwater noise mitigation technologies

Read more about ORJIP here

Article by Ian Davies

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