Sharing Information on Environmental Effects of Wind Energy Development: WREN Hub

Abstract

As the need for clean low carbon renewable energy increases worldwide, wind energy is becoming established in many nations and is under consideration in many more. Technologies that make land-based and offshore wind feasible, and resource characterizations of available wind, have been developed to facilitate the advancement of the wind industry. However, there is a continuing need to also evaluate and better understand the legal and social acceptability associated with potential effects on the environment. Uncertainty about potential environmental effects continues to complicate and slow permitting (consenting) processes in many nations. Research and monitoring of wildlife interactions with wind turbines, towers, and transmission lines has been underway for decades. However, the results of those studies are not always readily available to all parties, complicating analyses of trends and inflection points in effects analyses. Sharing of available information on environmental effects of land-based and offshore wind energy development has the potential to inform siting and permitting/consenting processes. WREN Hub is an online knowledge management system that seeks to collect, curate, and disseminate scientific information on potential effects of wind energy development. WREN Hub acts as a platform to bring together the wind energy community, providing a collaborative space and an unbiased information source for researchers, regulators, developers, and key stakeholders to pursue accurate predictions of potential effects of wind energy on wildlife, habitats, and ecosystem processes. In doing so, WREN Hub ensures that key scientific uncertainties are identified, tagged for strategic research inquiry, and translated into effective collaborative projects.