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.

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.

To accelerate the roll-out of renewables, the EU aims to significantly shorten renewable energy permitting processes, in some cases to one year. To hit that one-year mark, guidance and information must be readily available. These will help regulators to set up appropriate requirements for applicants and developers to provide quality applications.

OES-Environmental is hosting a webinar on 19 January 2023, from 3:30 – 5:00pm UTC (7:30 – 9:00am PST) to share tools for designing and siting marine renewable energy (MRE; wave, tide, ocean current, salinity and temperature gradient) projects with environmental effects in mind. This webinar will highlight OES-Environmental's Management Measures Tool, AZTI's Wave Energy Converter - Environmental Risk Assessment (WEC-ERA) Tool, and the Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit for Permitting and Licensing developed by Kearns & West.

OES-Environmental hosted a public webinar, “From Science to Consenting: OES-Environmental 2022 Highlights”, from 8:00-9:00am PDT (3:00-4:00pm UTC) on September 22, 2022. During this webinar the OES-Environmental team provided updates on risk retirement, guidance documents, and outreach efforts, and will also detail current focus areas for OES-Environmental research. View the recording and other materials below.

In this webinar, Rebecca Karp and Andel Koester (Karp Strategies) will discuss stakeholder engagement and offshore wind. Karp Strategies has supported NYSERDA with the creation of a free, open source offshore wind curriculum aimed at teenagers and educators and developed the agency’s Guiding Principles for Stakeholder Engagement for developers; assessed the feasibility of port infrastructure for OSW; analyzed MWBE procurement in the supply chain in Maine; and supported Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind with their stakeholder engagement strategy.

This public webinar provided an overview of the risk retirement process, including data transferability, and an update that will focus on introducing the new guidance documents for risk retirement. The guidance documents aim to bridge between scientific evidence and application for consenting/permitting processes.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Defenders of Wildlife hosted a free, nine-part webinar series, Wildlife & Wind Energy Webinar Series: Considerations for Monitoring and Managing Impacts, between August and November 2020. All webinars were recorded and are available on Tethys.

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. 

The monitoring datasets discoverability matrix (matrix) is an interactive tool that classifies monitoring datasets from already consented (or permitted) projects for six key environmental stressors.

This public webinar shares the information from several chapters in the 2020 State of the Science Report.

This public webinar shares the information from several chapters in the OES-Environmental 2020 State of the Science Report.

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

OES-Environmental and ORJIP Ocean Energy invite you to join the first International Forum on MRE Environmental R&D that will present and review the latest in research and monitoring around marine renewable energy (MRE) sites. This forum consists of three different webinars, each running from 8am – 10am PT (3pm – 5pm UTC) on April 21, 22, and 23, 2020. The purpose of the forum is to share the most recent environmental research and monitoring results with a broad audience.

OES-Environmental and ORJIP Ocean Energy invite you to join the first International Forum on MRE Environmental R&D that will present and review the latest in research and monitoring around marine renewable energy (MRE) sites. This forum consists of three different webinars, each running from 8am – 10am PT (3pm – 5pm UTC) on April 21, 22, and 23, 2020. The purpose of the forum is to share the most recent environmental research and monitoring results with a broad audience.

OES-Environmental and ORJIP Ocean Energy invite you to join the first International Forum on MRE Environmental R&D that will present and review the latest in research and monitoring around marine renewable energy (MRE) sites. This forum consists of three different webinars, each running from 8am – 10am PT (3pm – 5pm UTC) on April 21, 22, and 23, 2020. The purpose of the forum is to share the most recent environmental research and monitoring results with a broad audience.

This webinar has presentations on progress and updates from research presented at the 12th NWCC Wind Wildlife Research Meeting.

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.

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 will detail Annex IV’s framework, best management practices, and implementation plan for data transferability and collection consistency. The webinar will also present on how the MRE community has been engaged throughout this process and aims to gather additional feedback from the larger MRE community.

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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 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 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.

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

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 presents research on interactions between wind energy and grassland birds and ducks.

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.