Recognising that improved knowledge on the impacts of piling noise will be critical to be able to expand offshore wind power in balance with a long-term viable North Sea harbour porpoise population, a group of five offshore wind developers led by Vattenfall joined forces to initiate and fund the research program DEPONS.
Vattenfall is a leading European energy company and the second largest operator of offshore wind farms in the world with an installed capacity of approximately 850 megawatts.
Vattenfall aims to significantly reduce its CO2 emission levels. The development of wind energy will play a considerable role here. With an installed capacity of approximately 1600 MW in wind farms on land and at sea, the company already generates approximately 4 billion kilowatt hours of climate-friendly electricity. In terms of figures, it can provide over one million households with electricity.
Vattenfall is the main sponsor and project lead of the DEPONS project
www.vattenfall.com
Ørsted Wind Power develops, builds and operates wind farms primarily in Northern Europe. We have built more than one third of the total offshore wind capacity in the market, and five million Europeans receive clean electricity from our offshore wind farms. By 2020, the farms we have built will be able to supply clean electricity to 15 million people.
We aspire to build and operate our offshore wind farms within the required regulations and to consider where we can reduce impacts on the marine environment; this is an integral part of our ambitious goal to constantly expand renewable energy production at sea and to maintain our position as the world's leading developer of offshore wind farms. We fully recognize that we, as a major player in the offshore wind sector, bear part of the responsibility for supporting the development of knowledge of the effects of offshore wind development, such as those arising from underwater noise from installing foundations on species such as the North Sea harbour porpoise population. Therefore DEPONS is considered an important project for us to actively participate in.
Forewind is a consortium comprising four leading international energy companies which joined forces to bid for the Dogger Bank Zone Development Agreement as part of The Crown Estate’s third licence round for UK offshore wind farms (Round 3).
ScottishPower Renewables is part of Iberdrola , one of the world’s largest utilities and the leading wind energy producer with a renewables capacity of over 24,900 megawatts (MW).
ScottishPower Renewables is responsible for progressing onshore wind and marine energy projects in the UK and offshore windfarms throughout the world, managing the development, construction and operation of all projects from its headquarters in Glasgow.
