Future environmental scenarios for offshore wind expansion (NECR444)

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, The Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland commissioned a study to scope out illustrative scenarios for future offshore wind expansion in UK waters and understand the trade-offs associated with them (ARUP, 2022). This report identified 190 scenarios through an analysis of costs and spatial constraints. The publication of Future Offshore Wind Scenarios: An assessment of deployment drivers by ARUP (2022) presents an opportunity to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the scenarios identified. The results of such an exercise would be highly informative for the sector as they should help to identify barriers to development and facilitate early consideration of mitigation or any compensation requirements associated with illustrative future deployment scenarios. The purpose of the current report is to outline a range of methods that have potential to be applied to evaluate the environmental risks associated with scenarios identified by ARUP (2022). Through a process of review and conceptualisation, this report has identified four methods as applicable for the evaluation of environmental risk associated with the multiple scenario outputs of ARUP (2022). These methods are evaluated against a framework and recommendations on their suitability are made.