Round 3 wind farms – developers start scoping 

Phase one of development has commenced.

The appointed contractors for the latest round of offshore wind farm development have commenced initial scoping process for their planned developments.

The contractors for the 9 of identified offshore wind zones around Britain’s coast were announced by the Crown Estate at the beginning of 2010.

The scoping process entails the identification of the key factors and potential issues that the developers will need to consider in more detail in their Environmental Impact Assessment, which represents the next stage of development. It involves gathering key data on activity in and around the proposed sites such as commercial and recreational shipping, marine and wild life movements, marine aggregate extraction and fishing activity to name a few.

Environmental team inundated

As a consequence our environmental team has been inundated with requests for information from the various contractors.

Our new environmental & planning advisor Caroline Price explains: “It’s very positive that the contractors appear to be keen to take into consideration the issues relating to recreational boaters at this early stage.

"It clearly shows that the work we did with developers and Government in rounds one and two have borne fruit and that the RYA is recognised as a key stakeholder, to be listened to and with valuable, professional input”.

The key concerns for us are:

1. Navigational safety

• Collision risk

• Risk management and emergency response

• Marking and lighting

• Effect on small craft navigational and communication equipment

2. Location Loss of cruising routes

• Squeeze into commercial routes

• Effect on sailing and racing areas

In 2005 the RYA produced a comprehensive Atlas of Cruising Routes around the UK coast and this has proved to be a valuable source of data for the developers.

Technological advancement

Technology inevitably has advanced with the development of wind energy and we are likely to see a new generation of wind turbines in this round of offshore wind farms. The turbines will probably be considerably larger, precisely how much larger the contractors cannot say at the moment, and as a consequence they will be spaced further apart.

Caroline: “In the main we feel that larger turbines will be good for navigational safety because they will be spaced further apart but until more information is available on the potential overall impact will be we cannot say”.

Dogger Bank site

Situated off the north east coast the Dogger Bank site, if developed to its full capacity, will be the largest offshore wind farm in Europe.

At the launch of National Wind Week on 15 June Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, described how he could see Britain potentially becoming a net exporter of energy.

“We [Britain] can potentially produce enough energy to fuel 33 million homes. Now we’ve only got 24 million so there is a real prospect of us becoming an energy exporter again as were at the peak of North Sea oil and gas”.