It’s early days but new research – ironically coming out of the oil and gas sector – has given scientists hope that offshore wind structures could boost biodiversity by becoming artificial reefs, home to sponges, crustaceans, molluscs and fish.
“There's some great work happening in the science space that doesn't get a lot of attention but that's really interesting,” says Associate Professor Michelle Voyer, a principal research fellow with the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong.
Thanks to a new national research and training initiative, the Australian Centre for Offshore Wind Energy (ACOWE), university experts from around Australia have been able to start coming together to have conversations about both the challenges and opportunities that offshore wind might bring.
This has given Michelle, and other UOW researchers, opportunities to learn from colleagues, including those actively exploring the impacts of oil and gas infrastructure. What she learned was “quite incredible”.
“There's lots of overlap between the oil and gas industry,” Michelle said, “particularly in light of decommissioning platforms and what happens when you start to think about removing those structures, which have essentially become artificial reefs.
“Some of our ACOWE colleagues shared footage of some of the ecosystems that have developed around these offshore oil and gas platforms. It was incredible – there were lobsters crawling all over it, there was sponges, it was amazing.”
Decommissioning fossil fuel projects is now inspiring ideas for how offshore wind developers can not simply ‘do no harm’ but actually ‘do good’.
“There scientists and engineers both here in Australia and overseas working on ‘nature positive’ design approaches, which are exploring how infrastructure associated with offshore renewables can be designed from the beginning with particular outcomes in mind,” Michelle says.
“What this means is design could change to maximise yield of a particular species of fish that might be commercially or recreationally important, or to promote general biodiversity.
“It’s a really interesting discussion because it's acknowledging, yes, things are going to change when we put these big pieces of infrastructure in the water, but how do we make sure that change can be managed in a way that it provides benefits?”
How it works
Artificial reefs are created when creatures like shellfish, which grow from larvae and are distributed by ocean currents, latch onto structures as they float past.
“If you give them structure, they'll latch onto it and they'll grow,” Michelle explains. “So you'll see shellfish, seaweed and sponges and those kind of things start to grow.
“Then that starts to attract fish.
“So they become fish aggregation devices … and you start to get a whole ecosystem effect.
“Nature positive design recognises that nature will respond to changes in the environment and attempts to manage that in beneficial ways. This is why [wind farm] co-location with mussel and seaweed farms, for example, is something that's getting a lot of interest in Europe, because it’s a way of making best use of the infrastructure of offshore wind to provide a range of environmental, social and economic benefits.
For example, in a November 2023 article in the journal Communications Earth and Environment titled ‘Multi-use of offshore wind farms with low-trophic aquaculture can help achieve global sustainability goals’, scientists looked at the potential for farming of blue mussels and sugar kelp alongside North Sea projects to capture carbon and grow nutritious seafood.
Competition to watch
While developers in Europe are already trialling a mix of offshore wind and aquaculture farms, new ways of thinking are also being encouraged in Australia’s emerging industry, Michelle says.
“There's an accelerator based out of Sydney called Ocean Impact Organisation and they've partnered up with Southerly 10, which is one of the developers based down in Gippsland, on a specific competition aimed at supporting innovation in nature positive design for offshore wind.”
The challenge for Australian and New Zealand companies was to think beyond ‘no net loss’ as industry best practice and come up with solutions to enhance biodiversity via protection, restoration and enabling technologies.
“I think Southerly 10 are probably setting themselves up to be industry leaders in offshore wind,” Michelle says. “So if they go down this path, then I think it will push other developers into the path as well.”
The results of the Offshore Wind Net Positive Challenge will be showcased during Sydney Climate Action Week, from March 10.
“It'll be super interesting to see what comes out of that competition.”
Planning for community benefits
This year in the Illawarra, Michelle would like to see environmental concerns channelled into a collective push for community benefit schemes.
“That might be, for example, that a proportion of the funds that are in the scheme goes towards restoration of creek systems in the Illawarra, like Allans Creek.
“There's all kinds of environmental restoration projects that could happen across the entire region if there's a source of funding to support it. This has implications for First Nations communities as well, because partnering with land and sea rangers in Aboriginal communities to lead and develop those restoration projects would be ideal.”
After speaking at a Renew Illawarra Branch seminar last November, Michelle sensed a shift in the offshore wind conversation, which has been dogged by controversy since consultation began on a local zone in August 2023.
“I think there's interest in moving past this binary ‘Do we support it? Do we oppose it?’ idea,” Michelle said.
“That's what I'm hoping we can focus on a little bit more in 2025: what are some principles of offshore wind community benefit sharing that we can go to a developer, when they've got a feasibility licence, and say that this is what we want to see, this is what we want this to look like."
Challenges ahead
Globally, the political outlook in 2025 remains uncertain, while locally, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised to rescind the Illawarra’s declared offshore wind zone if elected. Meanwhile, UOW – where Michelle is a leader in the Blue Energy Futures Lab – is cutting costs in a massive restructure that could see the university lose 90 full-time academic staff.
“We'll roll with the punches,” Michelle said. “The energy transition question will not go away, no matter what happens at the election, and no matter what happens at the university.
“As an institution in our region that is undergoing transition, as a research institution embedded in this place, we have a role and we'll continue to have a role.
“I think there's incredible opportunity in amongst all the challenges and that's not at all diminishing the scale of the challenges. But there's definitely hope in there too.”
