Many people – including local ocean scientists – were taken by surprise when the government announced that it was starting consultation on a 1461sq/km area proposed for Illawarra offshore renewable energy projects on August 14.
From day one, access to reliable information about the new offshore wind technology has been a challenge.
“Unfortunately a lot of science is behind paywalls so it makes it pretty tricky for people to get to lots of the important information,” says Associate Professor Michelle Voyer, a marine social scientist who is part of the Blue Energy Futures Lab at the University of Wollongong.
The lab includes more than 30 researchers from across many faculties, including ecology, engineering and maritime law.
“It is an informal group with no external funding, but with a shared interest in ensuring that independent research plays a role in the decision-making around this proposal,” Michelle says.
“When the consultation on the zone was announced – way earlier than we anticipated – we rushed to pull together all the information we could find in order for a publicly available Frequently Asked Questions page. We also collaborated on a substantial submission – which is also available on our web page. The aim of this was to share resources with our community.”
The lab has given ‘in principle’ support for the concept of offshore wind, as have major global conservation agencies including WWF, Greenpeace, Nat
“Those conservation agencies have questioned claims that whales will be threatened by offshore wind, stating that the biggest issues that whales face come from plastics and from a warming ocean, which has impacts on their food sources,” Michelle says.
As well as sharing evidence-based research, team members have summarised findings to make it more accessible and highlighted where they think more research needs to be done.
“We’re passionate about being that independent voice in the community and about informing the debate,” Michelle says.
“There's lots of things happening out there that you can't see in the ocean. I get concerned when I hear from people talking about the oceans as pristine – they're not pristine, they're in a lot of trouble.”
Ahead of the government’s consultation closing on November 15, Michelle kindly took time to answer questions.
What are your thoughts on the offshore wind consultation process?
We’re at a point in our environmental history that we need to be looking at every option and giving it an appropriate consideration.
It's so important that people stand up and advocate for the oceans. This is a shared resource. The oceans belong to all of us and we are talking about private developers coming into that shared resource and making profits.
That care and that passion and that emotion is so important … we've got to channel that in a productive way to make sure that whatever happens in that ocean – whether it goes ahead or doesn't go ahead – that it's done right and it's done to the best possible standards.
What is one of your main concerns with the proposed zone?
The issue that has got a lot of public attention is the whales. That's what people are really concerned about, with really good reason. Because whales, they're awesome – who doesn't love whales?
One of the first things that needs to happen is that there does need to be some independent research around the whale migration pathways.
We shouldn't assume that the whales are uniformly migrating across the entire 35 kilometres of the continental shelf. We know that that's not true. There does seem to be some suggestions that they do tend to stay reasonably close to the coastline. There were some studies done in Queensland that showed that about 89% of the whales travelled within 5km of the coast and the rest were largely within that 10km window.
Until we actually do that work to understand where they are travelling, and what things influence where they travel, we can't have this conversation in an informed way. We're just flying blind.
What will happen to the whales if the sea carries on warming?
The future of our oceans looks to be heavily dominated by particular species that respond well to warmer temperatures. Some of the species that do very well will be invertebrates like jellyfish, squid, that kind of thing, and some forms of algae.
I have read some pretty alarming things around algal blooms in the oceans and how that will impact on marine food webs. Shifts in whale migration pathways are already happening in response to warming waters. There's concerns around starvation and malnourishment from the loss of krill and other species in the ecosystem.
Some oceanographers have started to give regular briefings to industry, in particular fisheries and aquaculture industry, around how they need to be preparing for marine heatwaves.
We're looking down the barrel of a very substantial marine heatwave this summer, under the current predictions. It’s actually off the scale of what they normally measure as a marine heat wave.
The things that stress me out a bit are the species that we tend not to feel so attached to. And some of these have cascading impacts.
We've lost a huge amount of kelp on the South Coast. There’s things that you don't see anymore when you go snorkelling. You used to see wobbegong sharks all the time. You used to see blue devilfish, weedy sea dragons and these big kelp forests with all kinds of fish and little critters that lived inside – we’re seeing all this decline.
The loss of kelp, in particular, is really concerning. Aboriginal communities on the South Coast are really worried about the rise of urchin barrens. It's a bit unclear whether we can point that entirely to warming waters but there's no doubt that it's played some kind of a role and it's certainly going to be really difficult for those kelp beds to come back if the waters are too warm.
No one wants to see impacts on the ocean that are unnecessary. But we have to think about that broader picture, and that's why fundamentally we just need to do more work to understand it.
Have your say
The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is calling for feedback on the Illawarra offshore area proposed for future renewable energy projects, covering 1461sq/km of ocean between 10km and 30km offshore, from Wombarra to Kiama. Click here to have your say by November 15.
FAQ at UOW
UOW researchers have drawn up an independent list of FAQs, which can be read on the Blue Energy Futures Lab website
Questions welcome
Do you have a question about offshore wind? Please submit via the Flame’s Get In Touch page.
Find more Ask An Expert articles in our Road to Renewables section.
