The Crown Estate has pledged GBP 7.3 million (approximately EUR 8.76 million) to support five research projects aimed at accelerating the UK’s path towards a net-zero energy system while also protecting marine ecosystems.

According to the Crown Estate, the five projects will aim to fill gaps around the impacts of offshore wind farms on marine ecosystems, advance solutions to reduce those impacts, enhance access to marine data, and explore the opportunity for the co-location of fisheries and offshore wind farms.

One of the funded projects is Disco Scallops, which developed a new low-impact fishing technique that led to a 500 per cent increase in scallop catch, said the Crown Estate.

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The project would provide the evidence base to demonstrate that static fishing methods can be used in areas where mobile methods might be restricted, like in offshore wind farms and marine protected areas.

The ECOCHANGE initiative studies how the construction of offshore wind farms impacts marine life. It looks at how new sealife forms on the wind farm structures and how nearby habitats, like sandy sea floors, are affected. The goal is to understand how these changes influence the overall ecosystem and the food chains in the ocean.

The MDE Heritage Accelerator is said to improve access to marine heritage data which is gathered when offshore wind farms are developed to enable faster, informed decision-making by regulators, developers, and their advisors.

The Pilot of Offshore Wind Environmental Mitigation (POWEM) project, which could further reduce the impact of offshore wind farms on the marine environment, consists of two pilots: painting the turbine blades to prevent bird collisions and limiting construction noise to protect marine species.

The fifth project, named S3 (Subsea Soundscape), will develop a new framework to provide insights into existing underwater noise conditions and marine mammal presence in the Celtic Sea^[1], setting the stage for more reliable environmental assessments for future floating offshore wind developments in the region.

The initiatives, backed by a GBP 7.3 million investment through the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme (OWEC), are led by the Offshore Wind Industry Council, Scottish Government Marine Directorate, Historic England, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.

In May 2024, the Crown Estate initiated a Supply Chain Accelerator to stimulate early-stage investment in the UK offshore wind supply chain. The GBP 50 million fund was created to accelerate and de-risk the early-stage development of projects connected to offshore wind.

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