The document discusses confrontation versus mitigation in the development of marine renewable energy. It notes that developers, energy companies, fishing sectors, and environmental groups have potential conflicts that could lead to confrontation. To avoid this, it emphasizes the need for baseline monitoring before development, modeling cumulative impacts, and establishing common monitoring standards. It then describes various monitoring techniques and the SUNTANS numerical model that can help predict environmental effects to inform mitigation and facilitate understanding between stakeholders.

1. Towards understanding the Environmental Consequences of Marine Renewable Energy Confrontation vs Mitigation EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 Dr. Susana Bastón Meira Research associate in the ICIT- International Centre for Island Technology

6. Confrontation vs Mitigation EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 Potential negative impacts Species displacement Environmental conditions Colision risks Noise

7. Confrontation vs Mitigation EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 How good is the energy resource? How the energy is dissipated? Long term and far-field effects Scale up to arrays

9. Monitoring techniques EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 a) Satellite observations Optical wavelengths: suspended sediment concentrations Dopplerised SAR imagery: currents b) High Frequency (HF) Radar: surface currents and wave spectra Remote sensing a) ROV (Remote Observation Vehicles) b) Gliders ROVs and Floats

11. SUNTANS model EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 u, v, w are Cartesian components of velocity u is the vector form of velocity q the non-hydrostatic component of pressure η is the free surface elevation f and b are the Coriolis terms υ H and υ V are the horizontal and vertical turbulent eddy viscosities ∇ H the horizontal gradient operator: SUNTANS is a numerical model designed for the simulation of complex, non-hydrostatic coastal, river and estuarine flows with high resolution on unstructured grids using parallel computers.

12. SUNTANS model EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 Resource: Dr Rob Harris 1 , Dr Karl Stephen 2 , Prof Margot Gerritsen 3 1.- ICIT/HWU, 2.- IPE/HWU, 3.- Stanford University

14. SUNTANS model EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010

16. Towards understanding the Environmental Consequences of Marine Renewable Energy Confrontation vs Mitigation EMBS – Edinburgh, 25 th August 2010 Thanks for your attention! Email: S.Baston@hw.ac.uk http://www.icit.org.uk/