Abstract
Background
As part of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the Dutch government aims to realise five offshore wind farms of 700 MW before 2023 and an additional 1,000 MW between 2023 and 2030. A further increase to more than 35 GW in 2050 by offshore wind energy is needed to reach climate goals. The Dutch government identified several challenges to the successful scaling-up of offshore wind energy. One of these is the ecological impact of OWF’s on the North Sea ecosystem, which can be either negative (bird collisions, disturbance, construction effects) or positive (introducing hard substrate in a mainly soft sediment ecosystem, bottom-trawling ban). There is increasing international evidence for the ecological opportunities and positive effects of offshore wind farms (OWF’s) on subsurface marine ecosystems. Scour protection functions as settling substrate for marine organisms and habitat for fish, crabs and lobsters. This has motivated the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality to use the development of OWF’s to strengthen the North Sea ecosystem by enhancement of ecological functioning in OWF’s to improve the status of policy-relevant species.
Objectives
The BENSO-project contributes to Programme line 3 of the TKI-WOZ programme Integration of offshore wind energy in the environment (ecology and multi-use) and aims to: 1) To create economical value by developing, testing and implementing smart ecological design for scour protection in offshore wind farms to enhance biodiversity locally and in the wider ecosystem. 2) Implement smart monitoring techniques in monitoring programmes and maintenance operations.
Activities
The BENSO project aimed to develop and implement methods and techniques for biodiversity enhancement within offshore wind farms. The positive impacts of scour protection on species and ecosystem scale will be quantified by desk studies, field experiments in OWF’s. Smart monitoring techniques were implemented in experiments, regular monitoring and in maintenance operations. Smart ecological design of scour protection will be developed and tested. An approach to select smart ecological designs is made available to the OWF industry.