27th
March
2009
Atmos Director to Make Waves at Energy Conference
The Technical Director of Atmos Consulting's Offshore wing yesterday challenged traditional thinking on offshore renewable energy developments and stressed the need for further research into the overall environmental impacts of renewable projects offshore.
Speaking at the Energy and Environment 2009 conference held in London, John Sturman, Technical Director of Atmos Consulting, emphasised the leading role that offshore developments will play in meeting the UK's renewable energy targets.
Mr Sturman said: "Compared to the terrestrial environment, knowledge of the marine environment is still very much a poorly understood science and a significant lack of understanding of the breadth of environmental impacts exists amongst most people. Worryingly, there are misconceptions about the impacts on the marine environment of offshore renewable energy developments which actually provide unprecedented environmental opportunities for ecological enhancement."
"The benefits of offshore renewable developments are far reaching and far outweigh any negative impacts, which have been shown to be mostly negligible, temporary and localised. Offshore turbines, for example, actually create an artificial reef, enhancing the natural habitat. The areas within the developments are protected from fishermen, particularly trawlers, which supports and boosts falling fish stocks which actually enhances the natural ecology underwater. This in turn has wider environmental benefits such as boosting bird and marine mammal populations that have been failing due to food shortages."
John Sturman has already developed a tool to close some of the gaps in offshore knowledge – Windscan. Windscan provides accurate, site-specific data for the last 20 years on potential offshore sites. The tool has been developed with NASA and has been used by E-ON and Scottish Power during Round Three offshore wind developments to provide the most reliable data ever available on wind speed and direction offshore.
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