Seabird studies don’t add up, industry body says

Methods used to calculate the potential impact of offshore wind farms on seabird populations could be substantially overestimating the true impacts, meaning they may not be biologically plausible and may be highly unlikely to occur, says a report by the Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council (SOWEC) published today (December 19).

As part of the consenting process, all offshore wind projects must undertake ornithological Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). 

An EIA looks at how a proposed development could affect seabirds. It checks whether seabirds might lose their habitat, be disturbed or be harmed, for example, through collisions with wind turbines. EIAs are used to decide whether an offshore wind project should compensate for the impact they are projected to have. Compensation can include measures such as improving the habitat of seabird islands to increasing the numbers of breeding seabirds.

The SOWEC report ‘Application of precaution in ornithology impact assessments for offshore wind project applications: Evaluation of current approaches’, produced by SLR Consulting, is an in-depth study on how precaution is applied in these assessments.

The Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate and NatureScot provide advice to those carrying out EIAs. They recommend that ornithology EIAs apply the precautionary principle to their calculations when determining the impact on seabirds.

The precautionary principle is designed to assist with decision-making when there is a risk of environmental damage, but a lack of scientific certainty in the underlying evidence.

SOWEC’s report evaluated the current approaches to applying precaution in EIAs and found:

• Precaution is currently introduced at multiple points throughout the assessment process. This means precaution is compounded which can make the predicted impacts higher than they are ever likely to be in reality.
• It is not clear how much the impacts are overestimated, which means the current methods may be producing estimated impacts which are not biologically plausible and would be highly unlikely to occur.
• This means that current approaches may be substantially overestimating the amount of seabird compensation that projects and plans require to build critical offshore renewable energy infrastructure.
• Current methods do not take into account the likelihood of projected impacts actually occurring, so the regulator is not being provided with the full picture when they make decisions.

The SOWEC report recommends that precaution should be applied to the outputs of ornithology EIAs, instead of to individual inputs as is currently done, and calls for NatureScot and the Scottish Government to urgently consider the issues identified in this report and move to a risk-based approach for offshore wind farm consenting.

The report has been prepared by SLR Consulting on behalf of SOWEC, a partnership between the Scottish public sector and the offshore wind industry, and published by Scottish Renewables, who co-chair SOWEC.

Colin Palmer, Director of Offshore at Scottish Renewables, and chair of the SOWEC Environment and Planning, Data and Route to Market theme, said:

“Ornithology impact assessments are extremely complex and the current process to determine the impact of offshore wind farms on seabirds presents a risk to the UK's offshore wind sector.

“SOWEC’s report has identified areas in which current assessments may be unrealistic, which means that offshore wind projects, as applicable, could be paying more in compensation than is truly necessary.

“The report recommends that future assessments should follow a robust scientific evaluation of evidence to inform a risk-based approach to decision-making, with precaution then applied to those decisions.

“We are calling for coordinated action to address these issues and look forward to continued close working between industry, the Scottish Government and other agencies to tackle the issues raised in this report.”

Ends

Notes to editors

• Read the ‘Application of precaution in ornithology impact assessments for offshore wind project applications: Evaluation of current approaches' report via this link.