Abstract
As the marine renewable energy (MRE) industry progresses around the world, understanding of the potential environmental effects of MRE has improved. Opportunities to investigate the environmental effects of operational MRE devices have increased in recent years with more projects in the water. Despite these advancements, some areas of uncertainty persist. Key concerns remain about how MRE devices and arrays interact with surrounding environments, and how marine animals behave around them. These uncertainties continue to pose challenges during consenting processes for MRE. Additionally, the development of larger-scale MRE devices and arrays presents new questions and uncertainty for MRE consenting processes, particularly in understanding how potential environmental effects of MRE scale up and interact with other ocean activities.
To better understand how regulators perceive and manage environmental risks during consenting processes for MRE projects, a survey was conducted across several OES-Environmental member countries beginning in 2025. Building on a previous regulator survey conducted by OES-Environmental for multiple countries from 2017-2021, this survey included updated questions to reflect changing information needs regarding the potential environmental effects of MRE. Its purpose was to understand regulators’ familiarity with MRE technologies, perceptions of potential environmental risks associated with MRE technologies across varying scales, and views on best approaches to MRE development, including consenting and the applicability of data transferability. The survey also included questions to collect information on the use of Tethys. A list of questions and answer options are provided in Appendix A.
This report summarizes the results from the survey of regulators in the United Kingdom (UK). Countries within the UK included in this survey are Scotland and Wales. Results are compared to the previous survey for the UK, conducted in 2018 and published in 2019.