June 24, 2020 — Rhode Island is still the only state in the country with an offshore wind farm, but that will change in the coming years as wind farms are built along the entire Eastern Seaboard, from Virginia all the way up to Maine.
Now five years old, the Block Island wind farm, consisting of just five turbines, has been the subject of considerable study as scientists determine what impacts, if any, the construction of the facility and the turbines themselves are having on the ecosystem. Researchers are also looking to the future, when thousands of wind turbines will be coming online.
At the second of four webinars in the 17th annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium, scientists from the University of Rhode Island and elsewhere heard from researchers in Europe, where offshore wind power has been commonplace for decades.
Entitled “Offshore Renewable Energy — Changes in Habitats and Ecosystems,” the June 15 symposium focused on the impacts of individual turbines and larger-scale wind energy installations on the diversity and interactions of marine species.
Emma Sheehan of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom and Jan Vanaverbeke of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences in Belgium presented some of the findings of their research on the environmental impacts of large-scale commercial wind and wave energy farms.