2  Environmental Impact.

2.1   Environmental Impact Assessment

Within the EU, an Environmental Impact Assessment [1] (EIA) must be carried out before public approval for larger projects can be granted. The minimum requirements of the EIA are specified in the EC Council Directive 85/337/EEC [i] amended in Directive 97/11/EC [ii].

The directives require that private and public projects, which are likely to have significant effects on the environment, must be subject to an assessment of their potential effects on the environment before they can be allowed to proceed.

An EIA shall identify, describe and assess the direct and indirect effects of a project on the following factors:

• human beings, fauna and flora
• soil, water, air, climate and the landscape
• material assets and the cultural heritage
• the interaction between these factors mentioned

The directives lay down rules for the EIA procedure, which includes a requirement for public participation: the results are to be made public, and the views of the public taken into consideration in the consenting procedure.

Wind energy projects are specifically mentioned in Annex 2 of the Directive 97/11/EC, indicating that the individual member states shall determine, either through a case-by-case examination or through thresholds or criterions set by the member state, whether wind power projects shall be made subject to an assessment.

In this way member states may exempt a specific project from the provisions in the directives, but it is unlikely that any offshore wind farm may be publicly approved without an EIA because of its size and the public attention regarding its environmental effects.

General conclusions:

Developers of offshore wind farms must carry out an EIA on the specific project, with the purpose of providing information about the possible impacts on the environment from the time of installation till the dismantling of the turbines and foundation.

The EIAs from individual offshore wind energy projects will contain much valuable information regarding the effects from wind energy on the environment, but due to the fact that the experiences with offshore wind power are still relatively limited, the literature on environmental impacts appears sparse. In some cases the first pilot studies are only now underway. Currently only Denmark, Sweden and UK have put a few relatively small offshore farms into operation, and in Holland a semi-offshore farm is in operation.

2.2   Biological impacts.

The lack of experience with offshore farms and the impacts from here is clearly reflected in the responses to the questionnaires.

Only a few case studies on the impact on fish, birds, sea mammals and flora have been carried out in connection with the offshore plans already established, either as part of the Environmental Impact Assessments or as individual studies. Nevertheless, the response on the questionnaires clearly indicates that this knowledge has not yet been compiled in any systematic manner, resulting in the fact that the biological impacts and mechanisms involved are still being covered by uncertainty.

Biological issues considered potentially problematic were indicated as:

  Collision of birds with turbines

  Ousting birds off their traditional feeding/roosting grounds

  Unknown effect of low frequency noise emissions on fish life and sea mammals

  Impacts on fish larvae

  Disturbances of seabed and fauna during construction and operation.

2.2.1    Birds

2.2.1.1  Terminology

In the EU, different terms for bird-protected areas exist, the most important regarding offshore conditions being: Important Bird Areas (IBAs), Special Protected Areas (SPAs), Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Ramsar areas.

• IBA Important Bird Area - is a BirdLife term [iii] and covers a conservable site identified on the basis of its international significance for the conservation of birds at the global, regional or sub-regional level for: threatened bird species, congregatory bird species, assemblages of restricted-range species and assemblages of biome-restricted bird species. IBAs are identified by the private organisation BirdLife using standardised, internationally agreed criteria, but the term IBA in itself does not imply any legal protection of the area. IBAs have borders described, but these borders may not all have been precisely defined. Furthermore, the selection of IBAs in Europe has not been finalised national BirdLife partners may add more areas to the list, as indicated by e.g. the Swedish Ornithologist Organisation [iv].
• SPA Special Protection Area - is the official EU term regarding protection of birds, and SPAs are designated in the EU under the EC Birds Directive 79/409/EEC. The protections requirement regarding SPAs are given in Article 4(4) of the directive, where it is stated that for SPAs Member States shall take appropriate steps to avoid pollution or deterioration of habitats or any disturbance affecting the birds, in so far as these would be significant having regard to the objectives of this Article
  Member states shall furthermore, according to the directive, assess any plan or project that either by itself or in combination with other plans or projects is likely to have a significant effect on an SPA, and ensure that any such plan or project is not approved if it would adversely affect the integrity of the site, unless there are imperative reasons of overriding public interest [v]
  There are currently 1,375 SPAs in Europe
• SAC Special Area of Conservation is an EU term covering areas designated in relation to the EC Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC. The aim of the directive is to contribute to the maintenance of biological diversity through the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora in the Europeans territory of the member states. According to the directive, member states are committed to protect wild species and the habitats of plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates and to conserve threatened types of habitats. The designation of a SAC is only possible after a site has been adopted as a Site of Community Importance (SCI). An aim of the directive has been to establish the Natura 2000 network in order to ensure that selected habitats and species are maintained at or restored to a favourable conservation status.
• Ramsar areas are designated on basis of the international Ramsar Convention on Conservation of Wetlands of International Importance, especially for birds. Sites included in the Ramsar List are subject to conservation measures, including the establishment of nature reserves. If a site is de-listed, states having ratified the convention are obliged to compensate for the loss by creating additional nature reserves or by protecting an adequate portion of the original habitat [v].
  
  Other international conventions of relevance are the Bonn Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), aiming at conserving species of wild animals that migrate across or outside national boundaries, and the Berne Convention on the Conservation of Europeans Wildlife and Natural Habitats, aiming at the conservation of wild European flora and fauna in their natural habitats. The convention also covers non-European countries, e.g. in the case of migratory species moving to Asia and Africa.
  
  

Only the term IBA will be used in this report, for the following reasons:

• Ramsar areas, SACs and SPAs are in many cases the same
• the 1,357 SPAs overlap partly or wholly with 54% of all (3,619) European IBAs identified by the BirdLife European Partnership [2]
• the IBA approach is scientifically rigorous and BirdLife organisations advocates the importance of these sites
• according to the European Court of Justice [3] unclassified sites that deserve EU classification, should be treated as classified sites, in other words: IBAs, which have not been officially declared as SPAs, must be treated as an SPA until a decision has been made. BirdLifes official goal is to have 75% of the IBAs declared as SPAs.

2.2.1.2  Impact on Birds

The answers to the questionnaires and the ranking of the subject show that the impacts on birds from offshore wind turbines are considered to be of very high importance in Europe in Holland, for instance, the impact on birds is the most important environmental factor according to the government, and when ranking the different issues in the questionnaire, the importance is also reflected in the fact that the impact on birds (and the visual impact) received the highest importance score of all environmental subjects from the members of the Concerted Action.

It is difficult to pose any general conclusions about the possible impacts for the following reasons:

  the impacts are site dependent (e.g. distance to shore, presence of fish, migrations routes).

  the impacts are relative to various bird species.

  only a few studies have been carried out for offshore wind turbines:
In Denmark, at Tun Knob offshore wind farm, Before-After-Control-Impact and After-Impact studies were conducted from 1994-97, but the results that no effect of the ten 500 kW wind turbines could be detected on the abundance and the distribution of Eider ducks were only valid for wintering Eiders [vi].
In Sweden, two studies on migrating birds at Utgrunden and Yttre Stengrund are being carried out, but with no definite conclusions available yet. [4]

  the studies carried out for onshore wind farms in some cases present conclusions that contradict each other, some studies showing that birds avoid the vicinity of wind turbines (The Greenpeace Study [vii]), other studies concluding that onshore wind turbines have only little or no impact at all on bird life (e.g. [viii] and [ix]).

Expected impacts:

Impacts on birds may be expected, such as:

  collisions of migrating or feeding birds with turbines (rotor)

  turbines acting as barriers between feeding and roosting grounds or in migrations routes

  ousting birds off their traditional feeding/roosting grounds due to physical changes of habitat

1. Introduction
2. Environmental Impact
3. Conflicts of Interest
4. Social Acceptance
5. National Policies
6. Ongoing Research Projects
7. General Conclusions
8. Selected References
9. Appendix