Abstract
In order to accelerate the expansion of Danish offshore wind production, it was decided with the agreement on the Finance Act for 2022 to offer an additional 2 GW of offshore wind for establishment before the end of 2030. In addition, the parties behind the Climate Agreement on Green Power and Heat 2022 of 25 June 2022 (hereinafter Climate Agreement 2022) decided, that areas that can accommodate an additional 4 GW of offshore wind must be offered for establishment before the end of 2030. Most recently, a political agreement was concluded on 30 May 2023, which establishes the framework for the Climate Agreement 2022 with the development of 9 GW of offshore wind, which potentially can be increased to 14 GW or more if the concession winners – i.e. the tenderers who will set up the offshore wind turbines – use the freedom included in the agreement to establish capacity in addition to the tendered minimum capacity of 1 GW per tendered area.
In order to enable the realization of the political agreements on significantly more energy production from off-
shore wind before the end of 2030, the Danish Energy Agency has drawn up a plan for the establishment of
offshore wind farms in three areas in the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea respectively.
The North Sea I area has a total area of 1.400 km2 which is divided into three sub-areas planned for offshore windfarms. The North Sea I area is located 20-80 km off the coast of West Jutland and from each of the three sub-areas there will be corridors for export cables connecting the offshore wind farms to the onshore grid.
This report concerns baseline data and information on marine mammals. The study was carried out on behalf of Energinet by DCE in collaboration with NIRAS during April 2023–March 2024.
This technical report concerns the first year of data collection in the Marine mammal work package. The data collection will continue for a second year. The report includes data obtained during the first year from three aerial marine mammal surveys conducted in April, June and August 2023 as well as data from April 2023–March 2024 from 42 PAM stations (9 CPOD/FPOD stations, 6 SoundTrap/FPOD stations and 27 FPOD stations). Furthermore, results from the noise monitoring at North Sea I (NSI), noise recordings of turbine noise at Kriegers Flak offshore windfarm (OWF) and array studies of porpoises and noise at Horns Rev 3 Offshore Wind Farm are presented. The results from the field surveys arre supplemented with existing data and information compiled from literature studies.
The objective of the environmental pre-investigations is to collect new data and compile existing data and information to be handed over to the future concessionaires as environmental baseline information for the concessionaires’ environmental permitting processes. The specific aim of this technical report is to provide updated baseline knowledge of marine mammal presence and usage of the North Sea I area as well as an updated underwater soundscape of the area.