Abstract
The new European Climate Plan, launched in 2008, imposes upon each member state a target contribution figure for the production of electricity from renewable energy sources that should be achieved by 2020. For Belgium, this target figure is 13 % of the total energy consumption, part of which will be realised in offshore waters. Since the Royal Decree of 17 May 2004 assigned a zone for the production of electricity in the Belgian part of the North Sea (BPNS), three companies, C-Power (Thorntonbank: 54 turbines, 325 MW), Belwind (Bligh Bank: 110 turbines, 330 MW) and Northwind (formerly: Eldepasco) (“Bank zonder Naam”: 72 turbines, 216 MW), were granted a domain concession and an environmental permit to build and exploit an offshore wind farm. In 2009, early 2010, three other companies, Norther, Rentel and Seastar, obtained a concession, but so far only Norther is applying for an environmental permit. Both C-Power and Belwind started their construction phase, with six gravity based foundation (GBF) windmills on the Thorntonbank in 2008 (fully operational early 2009) and with 56 monopile windmills on the Bligh Bank in 2009 (fully operational in 2010), respectively.
To allow for a proper evaluation and auditing of the environmental impacts of offshore wind farms, the environmental permit includes a mandatory monitoring program to ensure (1) the ability to mitigate or even halt the activities in case of extreme damage to the marine ecosystem and (2) an understanding of the environmental impact of offshore wind farms to support policy, management and design of future offshore wind farms. The former objective is basically tackled through the baseline monitoring, focusing on the a posteriori, resultant impact quantification, while the latter monitoring objective is covered by the targeted or process monitoring, focusing on the cause-effect relationships of a priori selected impacts. As such, the baseline monitoring deals with observing rather than understanding impacts and hence leads to area-specific results, which might form a basis adjusting existing activities (or even halting activities, in case of extreme environmental damage). Targeted monitoring on the other hand deals with the understanding of the processes behind the impacts and hence leads to more generic results, which might form a sound basis for impact mitigation. For more details on baseline and targeted monitoring we refer to Degraer & Brabant (2009).
The monitoring program targets physical (i.e. hydro-geomorphology and underwater noise), biological (i.e. hard substratum epifauna, hard substratum fish, soft substratum macrobenthos, soft substratum epibenthos and fish, seabirds and marine mammals), as well as socio-economic (i.e. seascape perception and offshore renewables appreciation) aspects of the marine environment. The Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models (MUMM) of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) coordinates the monitoring and specifically covers hydro-geomorphology, underwater noise, hard substratum epifauna, radar detection of seabirds, marine mammals and socioeconomic aspects. In 2010, MUMM further collaborated with different institutes to complete the necessary expertise in the following domains: seabirds (Research Institute for Nature and Forest, INBO), soft substratum epibenthos and fish (Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research, ILVOFisheries), soft substratum macrobenthos and hard substratum fish (Marine Biology Research Group of Ghent University) and atmospheric noise (INTEC of Ghent University).