The Water Power Program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently issued a Notice of Intent for a funding opportunity expected to be posted early this year, pending congressional appropriations. The Notice of Intent, titled “Environmental Stewardship for Renewable Energy Technologies: Marine a
Offshore-Windpark Riffgat GmbH is inviting tenders for environmental monitoring services for the offshore wind farm RIFFGAT. The tender stipulates provision of the necessary maritime technology – ship, as well as the required aircraft and crew. The contractor will be required to examine benthos, fis
Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) has commented the announcement on Maryland Wind Energy Area lease: On December 17th, 2013, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that “Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Tommy P. Beaudreau toda
After months of planning, mobilization and trials, the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) has successfully installed a data cable designed to connect to a recoverable underwater research platform – the first subsea cable ever installed in the Minas Passage. “Today proves that we can be s
Titan Environmental Services has launched and tested Titan Discovery, a 13m long GRP laminates catamaran designed and built by Alicat of Great Yarmouth. The new vessel will enhance and strengthen the capabilities of the Titan survey fleet increasing the number of operating coastal vessels to five. I
With critical federal tax incentives set to expire on December 31, more than 230 faith, conservation, and public health organizations; small businesses; and elected officials joined Environment America, the National Wildlife Federation, Conservation Law Foundation, and Southern Environmental Law Cen
Geophysical and environmental survey at Lynn and Inner Dowsing Wind Farms, which was carried out by the Wessex Explored vessel, has been completed and the vessel has left the site. The Thunderbird vessel is currently undertaking its scope of work during suitable weather windows. It is estimated that
From now on, new guidelines apply on the development of offshore wind power in German part of the North Sea, which regulate the protection of the North Sea harbor porpoises. As a result, the pile driving must be organized in a period when porpoises are in retreat, thus sufficiently far away from the
As the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw ended on Saturday, EWEA’s Chris Rose made a comment about the event on the Associations blog: Another annual United Nations conference on climate change has ended and international negotiators once again failed to agree to a new treaty on reducing global
The Renewable Energy Association (REA) has welcomed Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs’s (Defra) announcement last Thursday of the creation of 27 new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs). Developers now await the detailed rules for each MCZ, as well as decisions on approximately 100 remaini
Building offshore turbines higher above the sea surface, or installing fewer large turbines instead of several smaller turbines, could reduce the number of bird collisions, a new research has shown. The research, led by researchers at the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), examined the importance
A group of scientists from the United Kingdom and the United States have developed a method to assess the potential impacts of offshore wind farm construction on marine mammal populations, particularly the noise made while driving piles into the seabed to install wind turbine foundations. “Pile-driv
From July 1 to September 27, excavators rolled into Leybucht to move 33,000 cubic meters of soil and thus create the conditions for the Mittelplate, Germany’s largest oil field located in environmentally important Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Parks, to recover to its original state. This m
The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) has presented a study, according to which wind farms can benefit biodiversity. The data have been collected from the demonstration offshore wind farm Alpha Ventus. The foundations of the wind turbines have become “artificial reefs” at which shells,
