G2 - Development of population level environmental impact models

G - Environmental And Ecosystem Aspects

Status - published
Last updated on: 07/12/2023

Challenges/Opportunities

There are currently no standard analytical methods to predict population level environmental impacts and deal with priority issues of marine animal and bird collision risk, displacement and disturbance.

Solution

Development of data collection, analysis and modelling techniques that include uncertainty estimates for marine animals and birds from individual up to population level. This will enable scientist to resolve environmental impact uncertainties, such as collision risk, displacement and disturbance for individual to population levels.

Context and Need

Lack of certainty in population level environmental effects has high potential to be a showstopper (eg. Firth of Forth windfarm Judicial Review)

Summary

ORE projects may be prevented or held back by the lack of confidence of their effect on the marine environment. The current models do not predict the impact on individuals and on population levels with good certainty and so development of these models and the data collection and analysis methods behind them would enable more confident prediction of the impact on marine animals and birds.

This would enable the impact of ORE projects to be better understood and potentially lead to cost reduction in environmental monitoring and faster project consenting.

Impact Potential

The impact of improved models for population level environmental impact on marine animals and birds will help to remove a barrier from the development and acceleration of the ORE sector and will help to lower CAPEX costs significantly by enabling the sector to develop. New models will be cutting edge science.

Research Status

On-going research with lots of priority lists being created /updated, but little funding to proceed beyond current level of knowledge

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