Abstract
The intended developments of offshore wind energy in the Dutch North Sea up to 2030 including an additional 10 GW (North Sea Programme 2022-2027) may lead to cumulative effects on seabird and/or migratory bird species, in terms of estimated numbers of collision victims. In the Framework for Assessing Ecological and Cumulative Effects (in short KEC; cf. the Dutch abbreviation), the cumulative effects of all existing and planned Dutch and foreign wind farms in the southern North Sea are predicted and evaluated. This was done in 2015 in KEC 1.1 for offshore wind developments until 2023, covering a large number of bird species with a protected status (Rijkswaterstaat 2015). In 2019, this exercise was updated for the Roadmap for Offshore Wind Energy 2030 (Rijkswaterstaat 2019), to also include plans for offshore wind farms up to 2030 in the calculations.
In the 'North Sea Programme 2022-2027', zones for new offshore wind energy areas are designated. For now, 10 GW is needed before 2030 to achieve the aims set in the Energy Agenda. In order to be able to realize this further development of offshore wind energy in accordance with the Energy Agenda, the KEC needed to be actualised with the most recent knowledge. This includes, among other things, the application of new insights into the occurrence and flight behaviour of birds in the North Sea, carrying out calculations with the most recent models and evaluate the effects against the species-specific Acceptable Levels of Impact (ALI), as assigned by the ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food quality (LNV). The methodology for coming to these species-specific thresholds is described in Potiek et al. (2021). Moreover, new wind energy zones, hereafter ‘search areas’, were defined for options for accelerated development up to 2030. The effects of these search areas in terms of numbers of bird victims need to be calculated in combination with existing and planned wind farms up to 2030, according to the most realistic possible assumptions.