Ecosystem Change, Offshore Wind, Net Gain and Seabirds (ECOWINGS)

The UK government currently faces an acute risk to energy security from de-carbonisation associated with the global climate emergency, recent energy price rises and the threat of hydrocarbon supplies due to the conflict in eastern Europe. In the light of these events, targets for electricity generation from renewable sources have been increased. Offshore Wind (OW) will make a significant contribution to meeting these targets, but the timeline necessitates a 25% increase in the pace of OW deployment. The UK Government believes this acceleration can be achieved by making environmental assessments at a more strategic level, implementing nature-based design standards and reducing red tape.

Seabird impacts are the top consenting issue inhibiting OW expansion in the UK sector of the North Sea (especially black-legged kittiwake, common guillemot, razorbill and Atlantic puffin). Policy proposals for overcoming these issues include making environmental assessments at a more strategic level, adopting strategic compensation measures, and delivering net gain to seabird populations and the wider marine ecosystem that is robust to climate change. Our project addresses three key Research Questions (RQs) designed to deliver urgently needed advice to ensure that these policies are implemented in ways which simultaneously deliver both OW expansion and net gain for seabirds and the ecosystem:

RQ1. What are the cumulative impacts of OW on seabirds and on the wider ecosystem, and how do these scale with capacity?

RQ2. What scale and extent of compensatory measures are required to provide strategic headroom of net gain to seabirds and the whole ecosystem while avoiding unforeseen consequences?

RQ3. How can we incorporate sufficient headroom in strategic compensation to ensure it remains robust to future projections of climate change?

Our project will focus on the key North Sea OW-seabird interaction area off southeast Scotland, but all the methods will be transferable to other UK regions. To answer the Research Questions we will use a range of inter-related models of ecosystem, seabird, forage fish and zooplankton dynamics together with new supporting data. The models will be deployed in innovative new ways to address the policy-driven challenges and make the results accessible to stakeholders through online tools. The new data collection will involve novel use of autonomous underwater and remote controlled uncrewed surface vehicles (AUV and USV) working in concert and integrated with the digital aerial seabird surveys commissioned in support of existing environmental programmes by the OW industry and as part of the Crown Estate OWEC programme. The combined AUV and USV surveys will gather multi-frequency hydroacoustic data on forage fish (sandeel and sprat/herring) patchiness in control areas not yet developed for OW, and existing OW farms. The coincident aerial surveys will gather high resolution data on seabirds. These matched predator-prey data will provide crucial process-based understanding on predator-prey interactions needed to estimate cumulative impacts on seabirds (RQ1) and develop effective strategic compensation (RQ2). Data to support RQ3 on modelling of climate-proofing for strategic compensation measures will be assembled from UK AMM7 biogeochemical model projections of ocean physics and chemistry under the IPCC RCP8.5 emissions scenario. Developers and stakeholders will be engaged early in the project to design a suite of potential strategic compensation scenarios which will be incrementally tested as the project progresses. Policy briefs setting out the findings and advice-to-date will be produced at annual intervals to ensure that the new evidence and tools developed in the project are fed rapidly into the decision-making process.