NO-REGRETS – NOrth Sea Renewable Energy: Gaining the Required Ecological Knowledge for the TranSition

The North Sea social-ecological system is changing at an unprecedented rate and scale due to the construction of offshore wind farms (OWFs), climate change, fishing, and other anthropogenic activities. NO-REGRETS is a 5-year, multi-disciplinary research program designed to understand the ecological and economic tradeoffs of upscaling OWFs in the light of climate change and in relation to the ongoing food and nature transitions in the North Sea. State-of-the-art process studies are conducted to examine physical, biogeochemical and ecological gradients within, next to and far away from OWFs using: i) seasonal oceanographic research cruises, ii) in situ measurements from moorings and landers, iii) satellite remote sensing, and iv) biophysical and ecosystem models. NO-REGRETS advances knowledge on hydrodynamics, suspended sediment dynamics, phyto- and zooplankton, various life stages of fishes, seabed composition, benthic macrofauna and marine megafauna (from marine mammals to sea birds). This holistic approach collects information needed to test six hypotheses:

1) large-scale downstream ecological impacts of OWFs can be linked to changes in small-scale (sub-meter) physical processes;
2) large networks of OWFs reduce ecological carrying capacity resulting in reduced abundances of predators;
3) biodiversity increases at OWFs due to increased benthic habitat complexity and the exclusion of bottom fishing;
4) OWFs change the behaviour of top predators and abundance of their prey causing shifts in energy flow through the food web;
5) climate change causes shifts in habitat suitability of OWFs for ecologically and commercially important as well as nuisance species;
6) upscaling OWFs will cause economic tradeoffs across marine sectors due to shifts in natural capital and ecosystem services.

NO-REGRETS is co-developed with stakeholders to create tools allowing policymakers, industries and other stakeholders to gauge and minimise the ecological and bioeconomic consequences of OWF expansion in the North Sea.