Niras has secured a contract to conduct environmental impact assessments (EIA) for HOFOR’s two proposed offshore wind farms in Øresund, Denmark.
Niras said it is responsible for making sure that the planned Nordre Flint and Aflandshage wind farms can co-exist with the Copenhagen Airport and that they will not affect air traffic.
The company will also investigate the possible interference with bird migration as thousands of birds live on the island of Saltholm in the vicinity of the projects.
According to Niras, 25 subject areas have been defined for the EIAs, including marine mammals, visual conditions, socio-economics, geophysics, sailing, fishing and so on.
The environmental impact report should be submitted to the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) by 31 December 2020.
“It is an exciting task with many aspects that require thorough research. For example, there will be many opinions about the wind farms’ visual expression. Therefore, we must make sure that the parks add something to the area, just like the wind turbines at Middelgrunden, which have become a landmark for Copenhagen,” said Bent Sømod , Senior Project Manager at NIRAS.
In March, DEA granted permissions to HOFOR to conduct preliminary studies for the establishment of the two offshore wind farms.
The 160MW Nordre Flint project would comprise between 16 and 40 turbines with an individual capacity of between 4-10MW.
The Aflandshage project would comprise 25-63 turbines with an installed capacity of 250MW. The turbines would again have the individual capacity of 4-10MW.