Abstract
This deliverable provides a critical analysis of management measures that can be used to mitigate or manage the potential environmental effects of wave and tidal energy developments.
The aim of this deliverable is to critically analyse the environmental mitigation and monitoring measures that have been used to date in completed or planned wave and tidal energy projects. This will provide the industry with knowledge of successes and lessons learnt in relation to these measures. This analysis will be used to inform the development of environmental monitoring strategies used in Work Package 3.
The objectives of this deliverable are to:
- Conduct a critical analysis of environmental mitigation and monitoring strategies for wave and tidal energy developments
- Validate this analysis with a range of stakeholders from the wave and tidal industry
This deliverable is the second piece of work within Work Package 2 and builds on the overall impact of this Work Package which will be:
- A consensus on the priority knowledge gaps and consenting issues upon which coordinated strategic data collection and research efforts should focus, ensuring improved efficiencies in the allocation of resources and distribution of effort.
- An established European Network of stakeholders and end users engaged in better understanding the potential impacts of wave developments and improving the consenting process.
- Refinement of the consenting processes for ocean energy deployments, helping to reduce costs and the time spent in achieving consent.
- Environmental monitoring strategies designed to address the key consenting risks of wave energy projects that will be implemented during the project.
This deliverable builds on previous work by OES Annex IV on the development and appraisal of environmental management measures relevant to wave and tidal energy developments. As part of this work, extensive stakeholder consultation was undertaken in order to gather a comprehensive list of management measures designed to manage the environmental effects of wave and tidal projects during construction, operation and decommissioning/removal. This list was developed into a tool designed to support the development of project specific environmental management plans, which is available on the Tethys website1.
These management measures are intended as safeguards for marine animals and habitats until scientific uncertainty around the risk of effects of wave and tidal energy devices is reduced and such measures can be reduced or removed as appropriate.
This deliverable builds on this work, considering the advantages and disadvantages of each of the environmental management measures included in the tool to date.