Wind energy harnesses the natural movement of air to produce renewable energy and is one of the fastest-growing industries around the world. Technological advancements continue to lower the cost of wind energy, enable siting at offshore locations, and reduce environmental effects.
Tethys is an online database dedicated to advancing the wind energy industry by providing access to environmental information and research findings that can support siting, permitting processes, management decisions, and operational strategies while minimizing risk to the environment. Tethys contains thousands of documents on the environmental effects of land-based wind energy, fixed offshore wind energy, and floating offshore wind energy, as well as marine energy. Since launching in 2012, Tethys has a rich history of providing access to authoritative environmental information and continues to create new resources. Learn more about the wind energy resources available on Tethys below.
Tethys also serves as a collaborative space for researchers, regulators, and other stakeholders, and a dissemination platform for several ongoing U.S. and international research efforts. Learn more about the ECO Wind (Enabling Coexistence Options for U.S. Land-Based Wind Energy and Wildlife), SEER (U.S. Offshore Wind Synthesis of Environmental Effects Research), and WREN (Working Together to Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy) international collaborative using the buttons above.
Wind Energy Knowledge Base and Map Viewer
Tethys is a repository for thousands of journal articles, reports, conference papers, theses, and presentations pertinent to the environmental effects of wind energy. Documents can be easily searched and filtered in the Knowledge Base, a smart and searchable table, or the Map Viewer, a searchable map showing only documents associated with a physical location.
Each document is manually added and tagged by a trained team of researchers to assure a high quality of relevant information. Documents are tagged with relevant environmental stressors (e.g., collision, noise) and receptors (e.g., birds, bats) to highlight some of the key environmental concerns and enable comprehensive topical searches. For more information on each of the tags used throughout Tethys, check out the Glossary.
Additional Tethys Resources
Tethys Blasts
Tethys Blasts are bi-weekly newsletters that highlight new documents on Tethys; relevant announcements, opportunities, and upcoming events; and news articles of international interest. Sign up to join the mailing list here.
Event Calendar
Event Calendar highlights key events from around the world related to the wind energy industry, including conferences, workshops, webinars, and more. If you would like to recommend an event for the calendar, please email tethys@pnnl.gov.
Environmental Webinars
Tethys hosts webinars pertaining to topics of environmental concern, as a means to effectively disseminate new information and research efforts to a large international audience of stakeholders. Many webinars recordings are also archived on Tethys.
Monitoring and Mitigation Technologies Tool
WREN has created a free, online tool to catalog monitoring and mitigating technologies developed to assess and reduce potential wildlife impacts resulting from land-based and offshore wind energy development.
Offshore Wind Metadata
Tethys hosts a catalog of environmental monitoring at offshore wind project sites around the world. Information is vetted by project developers, when possible, and will be updated on an annual basis.
Organizations
Organizations lists thousands of companies, universities, and government agencies from around the world that are involved in research around the environmental effects of wind and marine energy. Each page highlights all the documents in Tethys affiliated with an organization.
Tethys Community
Tethys Community lists contact information for researchers, regulators, developers, and other stakeholders who have registered an account on Tethys and provided consent to share their information. Note, this page can only be accessed while logged in.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to contribute to Tethys, please reach out to tethys@pnnl.gov. And please consider subscribing to the Tethys Blast newsletter and registering for a Tethys account.