Abstract
The potential environmental impacts of wave energy, and the obligation on developers and regulators to document and assess these, continues to represent a significant barrier to the wave energy industry. As part of the EU IEE-funded SOWFIA project, on streamlining of impact assessment for wave energy farms, an evaluation of experience related to the detection of environmental impacts at wave energy test centres across Europe, coupled with information gained from Environmental Impact Assessments produced for other similar renewable energy developments, has been undertaken. This experience has been examined to understand key receptors of concern and methods used for detecting impacts with the over-arching aim of producing effective methods for communicating the information gathered and to identify, where possible, the type and magnitude of impacts which may be expected in future, larger scale developments. This paper focuses on a selection of these receptors, focusing on the variations found and the implications these variations could have for future assessments.