In Šibenik, Croatia, the global assembly convened for the Conference on Wind Energy and Wildlife Impacts (CWW). Among the esteemed presenters were members of the WENDY team, who showcased their research and methodologies, garnering attention from an audience of researchers, industry professionals, policymakers, and representatives of NGOs.
The overarching theme of this year’s CWW was the nature-inclusive upscaling of wind energy, fostering discussions on how to achieve climate targets by increasing the use of wind energy while preserving biodiversity. The WENDY team seized the opportunity to share insights and present research aimed at addressing the challenges at the intersection of wind energy development and wildlife preservation.
Vision for Holistic Development
Roel May, Senior Research Scientist at NINA and a member of the WENDY team, took the stage to present a transdisciplinary framework for holistic wind energy development through energy stewardship. He highlighted that the successful uptake and upscaling of wind energy require not only technological advancements but also societal support and acceptance of the socio-ecological aspects of wind farm siting. The energy stewardship concept aims to build social relational values and connectedness with the development process, supporting the sustainable development of wind energy.
Roel co-delivered the conference’s opening keynote, establishing the thematic groundwork for ensuing discussions. Additionally, he co-hosted a workshop focusing on the challenges of addressing uncertainty in impact assessments. These contributions underscored the WENDY project’s dedication to advancing collaborative knowledge exchange within the wind energy community.
LCIA Method for Assessing Impact on Marine Mammals
Thomas Kvalnes, another WENDY team member from NINA, contributed to the conference by introducing a recently developed life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method. This method is designed to investigate the impacts of offshore wind-power farms on marine mammals during the operational phase. By developing impact pathways for habitat loss and disturbance, Kvalnes’s work provided a spatially explicit framework for evaluating biodiversity consequences and informed decision-makers about potential novel sites for offshore wind farms. Impact pathways for habitat loss and disturbance are developed to characterise the potentially disappeared fraction of species for recently constructed and planned offshore wind farms.
ConSite Wind: A Tool for Informed Decision-Making
Frank Hanssen presented an overview of the ConSite Wind web-app developed by NINA, aiming to inform the balancing of socio-ecological and economic trade-offs in spatial planning of wind power projects. The web-app predicts and visualises spatial consequences of different wind power decision scenarios and enables developers, authorities, and the public to make more informed and transparent decisions for future wind power developments.
Members of the WENDY team were also co-authors on several other presentations and posters at the conference. The abstracts for all presentations can be found on the CWW website.