Context

Following the success of the call for proposals on floating offshore wind energy launched by the French Agency for Energy Transition (ADEME) in 2015, the installation of pilot farms will soon be operated in the Atlantic (1 site) and the Mediterranean (3 sites). The integration of these particular infrastructures in the complex and coveted environments of coastal marine ecosystems is a challenge from a technical, legal, societal and environmental point of view.

Objective

To develop an integrated approach to measure the effects of floating offshore wind farms on the functioning of coastal ecosystems.

Scientific and technical contents

• Acquisition of environmental data from the Groix & Belle-Île and Leucate sites.
• Description of the structure and functioning of the benthic compartment of these sites.
• Characterisation of benthic food webs down to fish living near the seabed, although they may not permanently live there.
• Establishment of a spatial knowledge based on human activities at sea.
• Construction of a methodological approach to measuring infrastructures’ social acceptability.
• Modelling and scenario-building for 2030 and 2050.
• Study on the legal impacts and professional fishing activities and analysis of the stakeholder network.
• Modelling of the socio-ecological system.

Resources

Project sheet (PDF)

Partners and funding

This project is led by Université de Bretagne Occidentale and France Energies Marines

The total project budget is €2,036K.

This project receives funding from France Energies Marines and its members and partners, as well as French State funding managed by the National Research Agency under the Investments for the Future Programme (ANR-10-IEED-0006-25).

Photo credit: France Energies Marines