Webinars for Marine and Wind Energy and the Environment

The Tethys team has partnered with IEA Wind’s WREN Initiative to collect information, or metadata, on the environmental effects of offshore wind energy projects on marine animals, habitats, and ecosystem processes. By making this information available, Tethys and WREN aim to enhance transparency around environmental monitoring efforts to progress the global state of knowledge and advance the industry in an environmentally responsible manner.

The American Wind Wildlife Institute hosted the 17th WREN (Working Together to Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy) webinar entitled, Experiences from conducting environmental research at land-based and offshore wind energy facilities. 

This webinar provides an overview of the information presented in the OES-Environmental 2020 State of the Science Report.

OES-E Environmental provided updates on progress to date and what's to come in the 2024 State of the Science report. OES-Environmental talked about the important role of coordinating and disseminating research on environmental effects of MRE and practical applications of OES-Environmental resources. Joe Haxel from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL) Triton initiative and Doug Gillespie from the University of St. Andrew's Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) joined OES-Environmental to discuss their efforts to expand our understanding by highlighting examples from their research around two key stressor-receptor interactions - underwater noise and collision risk.

PRIMRE (Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy) is WPTO’s centralized system for storing, curating, and disseminating data and information for all aspects of marine energy. All data and information generated from WPTO national lab, university, and industry projects will find a home somewhere in PRIMRE.

Working Together to Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy (WREN) hosted a webinar on 29 June 2022 from 10:00-11:00am EDT (2:00-3:00pm UTC) to present the results of the WREN Horizon Scan. 

The webinar highlighted results of stakeholder feedback from 294 responses across 28 countries identifying environmental priorities related to land-based and offshore wind energy development. Panelists from several WREN member countries will provide their perspective on the assessment and priority research within the next 5-10 years.

Multiple presentations in December 2015 address technologies for bat detection and deterrence.

The BioFREE (Biofouling in Renewable Energy Environments) project has commenced data collection from biofouling monitoring systems deployed across international marine renewable energy (MRE) test centres.  This webinar will  discuss current environmental research efforts in relation to tackling biofouling.

This webinar presents a summary of wind energy and wildlife interactions, including raptors, bats, and grouse.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) hosted an informational Marine Energy Career Panel on February 7, 2024. The panel featured National Laboratory staff from PNNL, NREL, and Sandia National Laboratories working to advance the marine energy industry.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) hosted an informational Marine Energy Career Panel featuring National Laboratory staff working to advance the marine energy industry on April 10, 2023. The webinar was aimed at current students and those interested in working in the marine energy industry.

This webinar featured an in-depth presentation on AWWI’s Eagle Mitigation and Conservation Toolbox, which includes modeling tools that advance the science needed to facilitate wind energy development while conserving eagles.

This webinar provides an overview of the risk retirement process, its development, and several related tools, including the data transferability process and monitoring datasets discoverability matrix. OES-Environmental's outreach and engagement efforts in the development of the risk retirement and data transferability processes will also be highlighted, as well as the feedback received from the greater MRE community on risk retirement for underwater noise, electromagnetic effects, and habitat change. 

Webinar presentations showcase methods for dissemination of valuable environmental data.

An instrumentation workshop was held in June of 2013 to discuss the current state of the science for environmental monitoring around MHK devices.

This webinar addressed the issue of reducing bat fatalities from land-based wind in the US and central Europe.

This webinar will cover The United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) Real-time Opportunity for Development Environmental Observations (RODEO) study.

While not yet considered to be a key strategic consenting issue by regulatory bodies, biofouling is becoming an important consideration for device developers and operators with increasing deployment experience. Similarly, as more devices are deployed, regulators are increasingly pressed to understand the potential for spread of non-native species, as well as any artificial reef impacts.

This webinar will feature two recent sets of research findings that will further elucidate the importance of EMF from cables and fish interaction with devices to the industry.

This webinar is the second of a two-part series covering research programs designed to understand the environmental impacts of offshore wind.

This webinar will look at the environmental effects of marine renewable energy (MRE) devices related to benthic habitat and community changes, and the effects of artificial reefs, specifically focusing on marine fish and crustaceans.

This webinar covers a manuscript produced by the WREN collaborative on individual to population impacts and WEST’s development of a quantitative assessment of the direct effects of wind energy on small passerines and diurnal raptors in North America.

This webinar will look at the socio-economic impacts of marine renewable energy (MRE) projects around commercial fisheries by exploring the attitudes of fishermen towards MRE projects under development and perceived socio-economic impacts and opportunities, as well as the co-occurrence and nature of potential interactions between these two industries.

The speakers will discuss smart curtailment from both the European and North American perspective.

This webinar addresses consenting wave projects in Sweden with the necessary collection of environmental and socio-economic data and on consenting tidal projects in Canada with the necessary collection of economic data.

The speakers will discuss reconstruction after decommissioning from both the offshore wind, land-based wind and adjacent industry perspectives.

This webinar will discuss three tools that can be employed for environmental assessments: RADMAPP, a spatial data management, display and analysis tool; the Impact Assessment Tool (IMPACT) developed in the United Kingdom; and Tethys Management Measures developed in the United States and the United Kingdom as part of the Annex IV initiative.

This webinar will provide a first look at GenEst and how it can be used to estimate fatalities at wind facilities.

This webinar will discuss perspectives from both Europe, where wind energy development has existed since 1991, and North America, where development is relatively new, but with hopes of rapid expansion.

In this webinar practices will be discussed for MSP in terms of its support to ocean energy development. Member States are in different phases of MSP development, with some plans already implemented and others in preparation. In this webinar, you will hear experts discussing MSP approaches and opportunities to the ocean energy sector, how some national maritime spatial plans are being implemented and what they can offer to a more effective ocean energy deployment.

Raptor interactions with wind turbines are a concern for the wind energy and wildlife community. Raptors have relatively low reproductive rates and are often protected by local, national, and international laws. The webinar will share information regarding on-going research on raptor behaviour and physiology as it relates to interactions with wind turbines. The webinar is part of WREN’s priority activity to reduce uncertainty regarding risk for raptors at wind farms.

Discussions focused on the probability and extent of damage occurring as a result of interaction between aquatic animals and MHK devices.

Presenters discuss several approaches aimed at understanding the interactions between marine mammals and diving seabirds around wave and tidal energy devices.

The presenters provide examples of research methodologies for the detection of animal populations in the vicinity of offshore wind farms, describe the technologies used to detect the animals, and, where available, discuss any existing mitigation measures or post installation/operation monitoring.

Topics of this webinar focused on developing methodologies for monitoring MHK devices post-deployment, including monitoring framework development and the use of passive and active acoustics to monitor aquatic animal behavior around MHK devices.

This webinar highlights the work being done by four scientists who focus their research on elucidating the tidal energy resource and potential in the Bay of Fundy, and how tidal energy developments there may affect the surrounding marine environment.

Wind farms can impact birds through collisions, barrier effects and displacement and habitat loss. Of these, collisions have attracted the most attention as the effects of direct mortality are considered to have the greatest potential to impact bird populations.

Anthropogenic noise production in the marine environment is a known stressor to many different aquatic species. This webinar focused on research efforts focused on determining the potential impacts of MHK-produced noise to aquatic animals.

The speakers present on tools they have developed to assess the potential vulnerability of birds to wind energy development.

This webinar features three modeling approaches that examine potential changes to physical systems. As wave and tidal devices are installed at commercial scales, measurements may be made to validate the models.

This webinar conveys information on the Annex IV project which center on international data sharing efforts for potential environmental effects of marine renewable energy to understand effects, minimizing the potential for redundancy of efforts, and increasing the efficiency of the permitting and consenting process.

This webinar details monitoring tools and large-scale monitoring efforts related to offshore wind energy.

This webinar provides an overview of EMF in the marine environment, how additional EMF signatures from marine renewable energy devices may effect certain marine organisms, and how research efforts are addressing this issue.

This webinar details techniques for monitoring bat activities offshore, in order to determine the impact that offshore wind may have on bat populations.

This webinar discusses current environmental research efforts focused around marine renewable energy test centers and what is being planned for future test centers.

This webinar delves into the concept of Adaptive Management (AM), and how it can be used as an effective decision making process in the face of uncertainty for the marine renewable energy industry.

This webinar will discuss noise monitoring research and mitigation to help protect marine life from the impacts of wind energy development-related sounds produced during the building phases and types of foundations.

This webinar serves as a follow up to the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE) 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Collision risk to marine animals was discussed, including the regulatory landscape in Scotland and the latest insights from current UK research.

In an effort to ensure that potential offshore wind development protects the environment and addresses the concerns of coastal communities, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is conducting a multi-year aerial survey of wildlife in this area. This webinar will outline the planned scope of the survey project and provide insights in the technical aspects of image collection, processing, species identification and data presentation.

The recently published Annex IV State of the Science Report summarizes the state of the science of interactions and effects of marine renewable energy (MRE) devices on the marine environment, the animals that live there, and the habitats that support them.