Abstract
Eight European countries are undertaking a Concerted Action for Offshore Wind energy Deployment (COD), EC NNE5-2001-00633. The objective of this Concerted Action is to speed up the environmentally responsible implementation of offshore wind energy in the European Union by an early identification and possibly removing of non-technical barriers: legal, administrative, policy, environmental and grid infrastructure planning issues.
These non-technical issues need to be resolved to enable offshore wind energy to contribute to the EC’s strategic goals and Kyoto objectives. The project aims to provide a harmonised European Offshore Wind Energy process for deployment, environmental impact analysis and for permission procedures for Offshore Wind Energy Farms.
One of the milestones and expected results of the project is a Harmonised Working Methodology (in the form of guidelines or standardised procedure for environmental impact assessment (EIA)) of offshore wind farms in the participating countries. In order to develop these guidelines publications on the environmental issues are collected and an overview is given.
This report is the result of an analysis of all publications on the environmental impacts of offshore wind parks, which have been collected and inserted into a database by the members of the COD working group.