Abstract
This study scopes research into the impacts and benefits of large-scale coastal and offshore marine renewable energy projects in order to allow NERC to develop detailed plans for research activities in the 2009 Theme Action Plans. Specifically this study focuses on understanding changes in sediment dynamics due to renewable energy structures. Three overarching science ideas have emerged where NERC could provide a significant contribution to the knowledge base. Research into these key areas has the potential to help the UK with planning, regulation and monitoring of marine renewable installations in a sustainable way for both stakeholders and the environment. These three key areas are:
- 1. Determine the far field effect of renewable energy installations that could alter the regional tides and wave climate in the UK and neighbouring countries and consequently impact on sediment transport and coastal morphodynamics.
- Validate efficient methods of monitoring renewable energy installation impacts that can be accepted and adopted by stakeholders.
- Increase predictive ability of models in the context of marine renewables by developing methodologies for connecting the different scales from small scale physical processes to device scale Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and to regional numerical modelling.