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Potential Environmental Effects of Deepwater Floating Offshore Wind Energy Facilities

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Potential Environmental Effects of Deepwater Floating Offshore Wind Energy Facilities Ocean and Coastal Management 207 (2021) 105611 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean and Coastal Management journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman Potential environmental effects of deepwater floating offshore wind energy facilities Hayley Farr a,1,*, Benjamin Ruttenberg a,b, Ryan K. Walter b,c, Yi-Hui Wang a,b, Crow White a,b a Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA b Center for Coastal Marine Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA c Physics Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Over the last few decades, the offshore wind energy industry has expanded its scope from turbines mounted on Deepwater floating offshore wind energy foundations driven into the seafloor and standing in less than 60 m of water, to floating turbines moored in 120 Environmental impacts analysis m of water, to prospecting the development of floating turbines moored in ~1,000 m of water. Since there are Mitigation few prototype turbines and mooring systems of these deepwater, floatingoffshore wind energy facilities (OWFs) Impact assessment currently deployed, their effects on the marine environment are speculative. Using the available scientific Renewable energy literature concerning appropriate analogs, including fixed-bottomOWFs, land-based wind energy facilities, wave and tidal energy devices, and oil and gas platforms, we conducted a qualitative systematic review to estimate the potential environmental effects of deepwater, floating OWFs during operation, as well as potential mitigation measures to address some of the effects. We evaluated six categories of potential effects: changes to atmospheric and oceanic dynamics due to energy removal and modifications, electromagnetic field effects on marine species from power cables, habitat alterations to benthic and pelagic fish and invertebrate communities, underwater noise effects on marine species, structural impediments to wildlife, and changes to water quality. Our synthesis of 89 articles selected for the review suggests that many of these potential effects could be mitigated to pose a low risk to the marine environment if developers adopt appropriate mitigation strategies and best-practice protocols. This review takes the necessary first steps in summarizing the available information on the potential environ­ mental effects of deepwater, floating OWFs and can serve as a reference document for marine scientists and engineers, the energy industry, permitting agencies and regulators of the energy industry, project developers, and concerned stakeholders such as coastal residents, conservationists, and fisheries. 1. Introduction expanded its scope from turbines mounted on foundations driven into the seafloor and standing in less than 60 m of water (e.g., Vindeby, Increased demand for electrical energy and concerns about the im­ Denmark; 4C Offshore 2017), to floating turbines moored in 120 m of pacts of climate change have prompted many governments at all levels water (e.g., Hywind Scotland, Scotland; 4C Offshore 2018), to pro­ to set aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase specting the development of floating turbines moored in ~1,000 m of the proportion of their energy portfolios produced from renewable en­ water (e.g., Bureau of Ocean Energy Management [BOEM] wind energy ergy sources such as solar and wind (Graabak and Korpås 2016). One Call Areas and the Castle Winds proposal in California, USA; BOEM, response to these changes is the recent, dramatic increase in the design, 2018, Trident Winds, 2016). Major incentives to develop deepwater, development, and deployment of commercial-scale offshore wind en­ floatingOWFs include reduced impacts on human activities and marine ergy facilities (OWFs; IRENA, 2016). The total installed offshore wind ecosystems, the ability to leverage existing infrastructure and techno­ capacity globally rose over 4 GW in 2017 alone to nearly 19 GW, and is logical advancements from the offshore oil and gas industry, and access forecasted to reach 120 GW by 2030 (GWEC, 2018). to larger and more consistent wind speeds offshore (Musial and Ram Over the last few decades, the offshore wind energy industry has 2010, James and Costa Ros 2015; Wang et al. 2019a, 2019b). However, * Corresponding author. Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93407, USA. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Farr). 1 Present Address: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Seattle, WA, 98109, USA. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2021.105611 Received 19 October 2019; Received in revised form 18 February 2021; Accepted 5 March 2021 Available online 31 March 2021 0964-5691/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). H. Farr et al. Ocean and Coastal Management 207 (2021) 105611 technology supporting deepwater, floating OWFs is still in its infancy, et al. (2016) into six categories of potential environmental effects of with few prototype turbines and mooring systems currently deployed. deepwater, floatingOWFs that are the focus of our synthesis: (1) changes Thus, the potential effects of these technologies on the marine envi­ to atmospheric and oceanic dynamics due to energy removal and ronment are speculative. modifications,(2) EMF effects on marine species from cables, (3) habitat To our knowledge, there is no scientific synthesis to date on the alterations to benthic and pelagic fishand invertebrate communities, (4) potential environmental effects of deepwater, floatingOWFs. We aim to underwater noise (acoustic) effects on marine species, (5) structural fillthis gap by providing a synthesis of the available scientificliterature impediments to wildlife, and (6) changes to water quality (Fig. 1). and an assessment of how the operation of such facilities may affect the To perform an extensive search of the literature on each relevant physical and biological marine environment. Such information will be subtopic, we refined our search with multiple keywords representing useful for informing the evaluation and permitting processes of sites for each of the six environmental effect categories (e.g., “electromagnetic the development of deepwater, floating OWFs, as well as for guiding field”, “electric field”; “noise”, “auditory”), and with keywords mitigation strategies of operational facilities. While a robust empirical describing specific potential effects discussed in the literature and study and test of such effects is not yet possible due to the lack of identified from citation chaining, such as “avian collision”, “displace­ deepwater, floatingOWFs currently in operation, the plausible types of ment”, “marine mammal entanglement”, “reef effect”, “wake effect”, effects and their potential magnitudes can be estimated and reviewed and “biofouling”. We also included in our search “mitigation strategies” through a synthesis of the scientificliterature on appropriate analogs (e. to identify potential strategies for reducing or regulating effects. We g., fixed-bottom OWFs, land-based wind energy facilities, marine conducted our literature search from 2016 to 2019, and included in our renewable energy [MRE] devices, oil and gas platforms). search only peer-reviewed articles and reports published by researchers, For this review we identified, evaluated, and categorized potential project developers, and government agencies, with no restrictions environmental effects of deepwater, floating OWFs. We also identified placed on country of origin. and discuss potential mitigation strategies that might reduce the Due to the lack of deepwater, floatingOWFs currently in operation, magnitude of these effects, thereby providing guidance on which effects and thus the limited availability of empirical studies and monitoring may be most problematic, which could be resolved, and which need efforts directly investigating their environmental effects, we expanded further study. This synthesis can serve as a reference document on the our literature review to include other technologies that could, at least in potential environmental effects of deepwater, floatingOWFs —a nascent some contexts, serve as analogs for highlighting potential environmental technology expected to become increasingly employed worldwide. This effects of deepwater, floating OWFs. We considered several analogs synthesis is aimed toward marine scientists and engineers, the energy where appropriate, including fixed-bottom OWFs, land-based wind en­ industry, permitting agencies and regulators of the energy industry, ergy facilities, MRE technologies (such as wave and tidal), offshore oil project developers, and other stakeholders such as coastal residents, and gas platforms, ocean vessels, fisheries, subsea cables, and other conservationists, and fisheriesthat could be affected by the development coastal infrastructure. Thus, phrases describing these analogs (e.g., of deepwater, floating OWFs. “wind turbine”, “wave energy converter”) were included with the key­ words listed above to identify relevant literature. The literature on > 2. Methods environmental effects of these analogs is extensive (e.g., 50,000 arti­ cles related to environmental effects of offshore oil and gas platforms), We conducted a qualitative systematic review of potential environ­ and, in
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