Workshops
VIRTUAL WORKSHOP - FEBRUARY 2025
On Thursday 6th of February, we were joined by project partners TotalEnergies EP Nederland and The Rich North Sea for our first Living Windfarms Project workshop of 2025.
The online workshop provided a crucial opportunity for discussion about the challenges for collecting and sharing data in the marine environment, with specific focus on the relationship between offshore wind and biodiversity.
One of the big data challenges is the lack of agreement around baseline biodiversity in the North Sea, and the degree to which we should attempt to restore this.
Many other important factors were raised during the conclusion of the workshop, where an interactive session was held to allow attendees to give their input. This included the need for adopting a standardised way of collecting and presenting data, discussions around which types of data are most important to support decision making, and how we can maximise the usefulness of this data by making it publicly accessible.
Various tools and platforms have been developed to promote the sharing of data. We were fortunate enough to be joined by Harry Richardson from the Crown Estate, who introduced one of these tools: the Marine Data Exchange. Established in 2013, the tool covers the whole of the UK and holds accessible data ranging from feasibility studies to decommissioning.
The Rich North Sea (Derijke Noordzee) introduced another of these data sharing platforms, The Toolbox, developed to inform nature enhancement within offshore wind farms. Their presentation emphasised the importance of striking a balance between human use of the North Sea and wildlife protection.
Nature Inclusive Design has been recognised as a way to achieve our offshore infrastructure development goals whilst also providing habitats for marine species. Exo Engineering shared some of our latest developments, such as the deployment of bespoke artificial reefs in the Dutch North sea, deployed in collaboration with TotalEnergies EP Nederland. These will be key to gathering vital data about the impacts and benefits offered to biodiversity through Nature Inclusive Design and supporting evidence-based decision making.
Project partner TotalEnergies EP Nederland also delivered a presentation which provided a crucial industrial perspective into the need for streamlined data sharing to support evidence based approached to marine developments.
A special thanks to all who joined us in hosting the Living Windfarms Project and to those who joined us on the webinar. We’ve got more workshops planned for 2025, so keep an eye out if you’d like to join the discussion next time.
Netherlands - July 2023
The third Living Windfarms Project workshop was held in the Netherlands in July and was delivered in partnership with The North Sea Foundation, Natuur & Milieu, and others.
The workshop encompassed carbon offsetting of offshore projects, with presentations and ensuing discussions focussing on how offshore industry employees believe offsetting could be successfully implemented and integrated into projects. Carbon offsetting could be achieved by removing equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, either through participation in offsetting schemes or by reducing emissions within the project itself.
Our partners and hosts, The North Sea foundation and Natuur & Milieu, aim to coordinate knowledge and expertise within the marine environment, to demonstrate that sustainable solutions are possible throughout the North Sea and beyond.
We presented the Living Windfarms Project as a viable, scalable example of carbon offsetting in the subtidal environment. Due to our consideration of carbon emissions throughout the development of our ExoReef units, our technology integrates carbon offsetting and is designed to increase biomass throughout the deployment site. Increasing habitat availability and the resulting boost in biodiversity further increases carbon uptake in benthic areas.
University of East Anglia - March 2023
The second Living Windfarms Project hybrid workshop was held at the University of East Anglia on the 16th of March 2023. The workshop outlined current decommissioning legislation and included participants in discussions about the process of decommissioning and the necessary ecological considerations. Dynamic discussions took place regarding the implications of existing decommissioning legislation on emerging environmental considerations, how this may influence decommissioning practices moving forward and the role of the offshore renewable energy sector in mitigating and enhancing habitats.
The workshop was opened by Dr Trevor Tolhurst and Dr Colette Matthewman who welcomed us all to the UEA and introduced the Marine Knowledge Exchange Network, a network of cross-sector marine stakeholders which facilitates networking and workshop events to increase the potential of all relevant sectors. Will Melhuish of Exo Engineering reintroduced the Living Windfarms Project and the interactive portions within the schedule.
Peter Cosgrove from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) outlined the current decommissioning legislation in the UK and the other countries surrounding the North Sea. This provided useful insight into current experiences, with decommissioning now on the horizon for some of the oldest windfarms developments in the North Sea.
Eline Van Onselen from The Rich North Sea followed, explaining the current processes of decommissioning. Eline continued by walking our participants through a hypothetical offshore wind decommissioning strategy scenario. It was incredibly interesting to hear how various key players would approach this. There were several key themes and challenges that surfaced during the scenario discussions, with implications beyond the footprint of the offshore wind development and potential for impacting the whole North Sea.
These included:
Is it feasible to recover rock armour scour protection as part decommissioning, considering the costs and logistical challenges involved as well as the damage to potentially thriving reef systems that have been established?
If structures aren’t removed, what limitations should be in place to prevent loopholes being utilised which can cause negative environmental impacts?
Is current legislation overly cautious or suffering from shifting baseline syndrome?
Repowering is idealised within the conservation field, however, it cannot be put into practice within the early windfarms due to inadequate pylon size for current wattages.
We finished the workshop with a short open discussion led by William Coulet, director of Exo Engineering, allowing everyone to ask the speakers questions.
This hybrid workshop demonstrated that there are many voices within the industry itself who are not only willing to discuss the potential for environmental restoration across the lifetime of offshore installations but have a real desire to see this enacted at a government scale. We hope that some of the key topics discussed in this workshop can be revisited in future events as the Living Windfarms Project progresses.
University of essex - November 2022
Our first Living Windfarms Project hybrid workshop took place at the University of Essex, featuring speakers from the University, as well as Bournemouth University, the Rich North Sea, and Exo Engineering. The main aim of the Living Windfarms Project is to establish mass production of ExoReef scour protection, which will protect windfarm infrastructure whilst facilitating an increase in biodiversity. ExoReef scour protection can function as a replacement for depleted hard substrate, which many organisms require for colonisation. These aims are aligned with legislation being implemented in England under the Environment Act 2021, which requires all new planned projects to achieve at least a 10% biodiversity net gain.
The workshop began by introducing the project and partner organisations before exploring the interactions between scour protection and biodiversity in the North Sea.
Eline van Onselen from project partner the Rich North Sea, clearly defined the scope of the project. Eline began by illustrating changes in North Sea biodiversity since the industrial revolution, speaking about the detrimental impact of upscaling of fishing vessels on marine ecosystems. Many marine species are or have been critically overfished, negatively impacting the structure of community assemblages. The potential of wind energy in the North Sea region is well recognised, with energy generation capacity expected to exponentially increase within the region. Provision of offshore wind infrastructure protection will be necessary alongside this expansion, which presents us with an opportunity to help North Sea biodiversity to flourish through nature-inclusive design.
Two other guest speakers also joined us at the conference, the first of which being Prof. Rick Stafford from Bournemouth University. Rick spoke about the impact of environmental conditions on community assemblages, which can be affected by factors such as seasonal changes or reef depth. Regarding artificial reefs, there is still some uncertainty surrounding the bioreceptivity to different types of concrete and the influence this may have on final community structure. This will be more extensively studied in the years to come, using various methods such as Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV), Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV) and scuba diving. Each method has associated advantages and disadvantages, with each method varying in suitability between different sites.
Prof. Alex Dumbrell from the University of Essex illustrated the future potential for understanding ecosystem responses to change in the form of biomonitoring. This involves using automated sampling to extract DNA from an ecosystem to monitor the changes over time. This has various advantages, such as improving our understanding of interactions between ecosystems and helping us to predict scenario outcomes more accurately. Using DNA to monitor changes in ecosystems is highly beneficial as it is fully scalable, can account for ‘cryptic’ species which are difficult to observe and will minimise disruption. Under-sampling and contamination represent potential disadvantages to this method but can be minimised using control variables. The need for more stringent ecosystem monitoring is evident, with biomonitoring representing a promising new technique for the future.
The conference concluded with Exo Engineering' s Will Melhuish laying out the roadmap for how we plan to achieve the aims of the project. The design priorities regarding cost, ecosystem benefit and time efficiency must be balanced with functionality. This means that the product must perform its designed role whilst also delivering its intended ecosystem benefits. Durability is also a design priority; Exo conduct rigorous testing of our eco-scour products to ensure they are of sufficient strength to survive transportation and deployment.
The workshop provided a platform of discussion between the 40 participants attending in person and remotely, from academics to windfarm industry leaders and policy makers. Additionally, attendees were able to take part in interactive polls to gauge perceptions of deployment methods and the most suitable features to facilitate biocolonisation.
If you wish to attend our next workshop, please register your interest by clicking here