Understand and minimise the environmental impacts of offshore wind energy

Successful projects will deliver:

• Advanced, interoperable tools (including MSP tools), robust datasets and scientific knowledge for stakeholders (scientists, authorities, project designers, permitting bodies, NGOs, citizens) to monitor, assess and minimise cumulative environmental and socio-ecological impacts of bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind at sea-basin scale and in combination with other human activities.

• Enhanced coherent monitoring frameworks—integrated with existing marine environment programs—providing open data on biodiversity and ecosystem pressures.

• Strengthened national and regional offshore wind deployment pathways that meet ambitious targets while ensuring minimal or net-positive impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems.

• Evidence-based identification of environmentally suitable and unsuitable areas for deployment, and demonstrated mitigation and restoration strategies.

• A clear pathway for sustainable, large-scale offshore wind roll-out that safeguards marine biodiversity and ecosystem services throughout the energy infrastructure life cycle.

Proposals must address at least five of the following: 1. Generate improved understanding of cumulative environmental impacts of offshore wind per EU targets, considering existing and planned human activities. 2. Expand monitoring and analysis from local/site- or species-specific scales to broader, sea-basin levels. 3. Develop and deploy comprehensive field monitoring of multiple pressures (noise, pollution, habitat loss, etc.) through all life-cycle phases. 4. Test and demonstrate new monitoring and lifecycle impact modelling technologies exceeding current state-of-knowledge. 5. Enhance Maritime Spatial Planning tools and align plan/project-level environmental assessments with public authority needs. 6. Strengthen modelling capabilities for forecasting impacts of future offshore wind deployments. 7. Identify and map areas suitable or unsuitable for deployment based on environmental sensitivity. 8. Design, test and demonstrate avoidance, mitigation, compensation and restoration measures aiming for net-positive outcomes, reaching TRL 5 by project completion. 9. Ensure all data are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) and published via European common data spaces and research infrastructures. 10. Guarantee complementarities with related Horizon Europe projects and the EU Digital Twin Ocean ecosystem. 11. Include analysis of emerging impact factors linked to mass deployment (e.g., decommissioning debris, dynamic cable risks, microplastic generation). 12. Publish environmental monitoring data openly via EMODnet and the IEA Wind TCP environmental effects Task.