NGO Webinar on Offshore Renewable Energy in the Baltic Sea

Offshore wind development is unstoppable and accelerating across Europe and the Baltic. The Baltic Sea is already a crowded and exploited sea, and with the increase of offshore wind, little space remains for nature to recover. We have an opportunity in the Baltic to do offshore renewable energy the right way – with nature in mind.

WWF Baltic Sea Programme and Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) have developed guidelines to point to a way forward and much-needed recommendations to make this happen. But is ‘Nature friendly’ offshore renewable energy achievable given the pace of development and knowledge gaps around cumulative impacts? What do we need to do to achieve this? What kinds of risks does acceleration over nature present? On the 31 we hosted a webinar and invited panellists from industry, policy, NGOs, and research to reflect on these and other questions in the hopes of doing a reality check and reaching a better understanding of what needs to be done to find a sustainable, collective way forward. This event focused on how to nature into offshore wind development infrastructure by bringing together the perspectives of wind energy developers, researchers and NGOs.

Our panellists:

• Kai Truempler, Head of the Spatial Planning division of the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency.
• Lena Bergström, Head of the Ecosystem Analysis Unit and Associate Professor at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Aqua
• Lasma Livzeniece, Executive Director at Latvian Wind Energy Association.

Moderated by:

• Johanna Fox, Director of the WWF Baltic Sea Programme