TY - RPRT
TI - Integrated Environmental & Social Sensitivity Mapping: Guidance for Early Offshore Wind Spatial Planning
AU - World Bank Group
AB - In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, offshore wind will need to make an increasing contribution to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. At the same time, it is imperative that offshore wind development is undertaken responsibly, considering both coastal communities and biodiversity. Especially in emerging market1 countries, coastal communities often rely heavily on the sea for their livelihoods, and the marine environment can be a vital part of their cultural norms and beliefs.Given the need to accelerate the deployment of offshore wind, governments in emerging markets are eager to progress quickly and some have already awarded seabed rights for projects, sometimes without adequate consideration of environmental and social (E&S) sensitivities. Poorly sited projects in areas where offshore wind could have significant impacts on communities and biodiversity will encounter difficulties throughout the permitting process, leading to delays and cost increases, and potentially resulting in projects failing to proceed. The detrimental impacts of projects deployed in these sensitive areas could lead to irreversible or costly impacts for people and biodiversity, stakeholder objections, weakened social acceptance, and negative implications for further deployment of offshore wind in the country.Poorly sited projects may also face challenges in securing finance. Delivering large capacities of offshore wind in emerging markets is likely to require financing that pushes or exceeds the capacity of many local lenders. To provide a sufficient volume of finance at an affordable rate, projects will often need to secure international finance to supplement local sources. To meet the requirements of international lenders and development finance institutions,2 offshore wind projects will need to align with Good International Industry Practice (GIIP)3 for environmentally and socially sustainable development. Avoidance is often the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way of reducing potential negative impacts. Therefore, it is imperative that projects are sited in areas where offshore wind is less likely to have significant impacts on communities and biodiversity while entirely avoiding areas where the likelihood of impacts is high.This guidance document, Integrated Environmental and Social Sensitivity Mapping—Guidance for Early Offshore Wind Spatial Planning (SenMap), is designed to support government planners in emerging market countries to identify potential areas for offshore wind development with the lowest E&S sensitivity. The resulting outputs—E&S sensitivity maps— can help identify broad potential development areas for offshore wind, at the earliest stages of government-led spatial planning. Sensitivity maps can support planning for avoidance, directing development away from areas where sensitivity is highest. While primarily a government-led planning tool, SenMap outputs could also be used to inform offshore wind project developers of the likely highest E&S sensitivities and enable them to select more suitable sites, plan mitigation measures, and integrate cost contingencies into competitive tenders. SenMap could also be used by developers and regulators alike to inform project-specific Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, through collating regional-scale E&S data in advance of more detailed, site-specific data collection efforts.The E&S sensitivity maps should result from a participatory and inclusive stakeholder engagement process which identifies the most important E&S attributes—that is, the features that could potentially be sensitive to offshore wind development. For this reason, the SenMap approach and outcomes are underpinned by good practice principles for stakeholder engagement. This is vital to develop an enabling environment for stakeholder participation, with the aim of improving transparency and increasing stakeholder acceptance. This is key to help reduce the risk of stakeholder pushback that could arise later in response to poorly sited projects. This, in turn, could delay both licensing and permitting processes, impede project developers’ access to finance, and ultimately slow down the pace of the global energy transition.There are several existing approaches to inform the integration of E&S attributes into spatial planning, with different levels of effort and different spatial scales, including Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment (SESA) and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). For example, the World Bank multi-donor PROBLUE program has published a Marine Spatial Planning for a Resilient and Inclusive Blue Economy Toolkit4 (the MSP Toolkit). This toolkit is a series of guidance notes and factsheets to improve understanding of the benefits of MSP (ecological, social, and economic) and to provide guidance on topics, including: (i) identifying entry points; (ii) climate-smart MSP; (iii) integrating cross-cutting themes; (iv) identifying key data and tools for MSP; and (v) formulating/implementing a plan. Lessons learned in established offshore wind markets have shown that MSP is considered good practice and significantly helps to reduce risk.At the same time, full-scale MSP and SESA-type approaches are often resource-intensive, multi-year, and costly endeavors. They may not always be readily accessible in emerging markets that are experiencing accelerated development timeframes for offshore wind to meet climate targets,6 increase energy security, and meet other country priorities. This means that, in some cases, offshore wind development areas and project sites may be chosen well before a country’s MSP is complete or SESA has been undertaken. The SenMap approach was developed to fill this gap, addressing a need for a pragmatic and proportionate approach to guide early spatial planning for the sector. Such an approach must also be one that can be rolled out at scale in the near term and one that can serve as a precursor to—and is compatible with—climate-informed MSP initiatives and SESA. SenMap outputs are not intended as a replacement for MSP or SESA. Rather, the E&S sensitivity maps are complementary and can be direct inputs to, and inform, ongoing or future MSP and SESA activities.
DA - 2024/06//
PY - 2024
SP - 156
PB - World Bank Group (WBG)
UR - https://www.esmap.org/Integrated_Environmental_Social_Sensitivity_Mapping
LA - English
KW - Wind Energy
KW - Fixed Offshore Wind
KW - Floating Offshore Wind
KW - Bats
KW - Birds
KW - Fish
KW - Invertebrates
KW - Marine Mammals
KW - Reptiles
KW - Sea Turtles
KW - Human Dimensions
KW - Fisheries
KW - Recreation & Tourism
ER -