Biodiversity offsets for offshore wind farm projects: The current situation in Europe

Anne-Charlotte Vaissière (), Harold Levrel, Sylvain Pioch () and Antoine Carlier ()
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Anne-Charlotte Vaissière: AMURE - Aménagement des Usages des Ressources et des Espaces marins et littoraux - Centre de droit et d'économie de la mer - IFREMER - Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer - UBO - Université de Brest - IUEM - Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - INSU - CNRS - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers - UBO - Université de Brest - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Sylvain Pioch: CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - EPHE - École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - IRD [Occitanie] - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier
Antoine Carlier: DYNECO - Unité Dynamiques des Écosystèmes Côtiers - IFREMER - Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer

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Abstract: The European Union׳s energy policy aims to increase the proportion of energy derived from renewable sources in Europe. Marine renewable energy, offshore wind energy especially, contributes to the renewable energy mix. Offshore wind farms appear to be clean, and are supported by governments and NGOs as a way to reduce the use of conventional energy resources and thus decrease greenhouse gas emissions. However, developing infrastructure in marine areas can impact marine ecosystems. European directives ask offshore wind farm developers to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) including a mitigation hierarchy, i.e. envisaging measures that would avoid, reduce, and if possible offset significant adverse effects on ecosystems and human activities. This paper reviews EIA reports from seven European countries and is focused on impacts on the open water marine environment. According to the reports, measures have been taken for avoiding and reducing impacts, so there should be no significant negative residual impacts and hence no need of offsets. But the mitigation hierarchy for ecological impacts seems to have been incompletely implemented, because it is unlikely that there are no significant residual impacts. The paper proposes some technical and ecological explanations, followed by some governance and social explanations, for the absence of biodiversity offsets

Keywords: Mitigation hierarchy; Offshore wind farms; EIA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01692356v1
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Published in Marine Policy, 2014, 48, pp.172 - 183. ⟨10.1016/j.marpol.2014.03.023⟩

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Journal Article: Biodiversity offsets for offshore wind farm projects: The current situation in Europe (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01692356

DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2014.03.023

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