Proposed Berwick Bank offshore windfarm – a disaster for seabirds and the wrong way to reach net zero

We are in a nature and climate emergency. Climate change is the greatest threat to nature (and us). To tackle it we must transition to renewable energy. Offshore wind has an important part to play in a just transition away from Scotland’s dependence on fossil fuels, but this cannot come at the expense of our incredible nature.

Offshore windfarms built in the wrong places can cause huge damage and harm to birds and other nature. This can be directly through death by collision or indirectly including by preventing or reducing access to feeding areas, taking away their vital sources of food.

Today we have strongly objected to the Berwick Bank offshore windfarm application.

This proposed development would be located around 38 kilometres off the East Lothian coast and is one of the largest offshore windfarms to be proposed in the UK to date.  

The application area overlaps with the Outer Firth of Forth and St Andrew’s Bay complex Special Protection Area (SPA). This is an area which hosts one of the most diverse gatherings of marine birds in Scotland. In the breeding season it is a feeding ground for more than 100,000 seabirds. There are numerous seabird colonies nearby too, many of which are also protected as SPAs because they support rare, threatened or vulnerable birds. And the application area overlaps with a Marine Protected Area which is great for Sandeels helping to explain why it’s such a crucial place for seabirds to feed.

Puffins are one of the species predicted to be impacted by this proposed development. Image by Ian Francis

Seabirds are long-lived. They take longer to reach breeding age than most other birds and have just one or two young per year. Therefore, their numbers can be heavily impacted by changes to adult mortality like those that might result from an offshore windfarm.

Scotland is globally important for seabirds, but many of our seabirds are really struggling. An index of 11 Scottish breeding seabirds declined by nearly half (49%) between 1986 and 2019.

Kittiwakes have suffered massive declines, Gannets (of which Scotland supports 46% of the world’s population) were severely impacted by bird flu last year, and Puffins were recently red listed in the UK and are vulnerable to global extinction.

All these species would be impacted by the Berwick Bank windfarm development if it was granted consent to go ahead.

Kittiwakes would be impacted the most by this proposed windfarm. They are already in trouble. Image by Ian Francis 

The impacts of the project are large and, we believe, totally unacceptable. The modelling predicts that at the end of the 35-year lifetime of the development seabird numbers in all nearby protected populations (Firth of Forth, Fowlsheugh and St Abb’s Head) will have declined by between 5 and 35%. But for Kittiwakes at St Abb’s, it predicts declines of more than 60% compared to without the development.

The predicted impacts, together with those of other offshore wind developments in the North Sea, go well beyond the application area too because of the large distances many seabirds travel to find food. There are predicted impacts at SPAs in Caithness where the Puffin population could be reduced by more than half and for Shetland’s Gannet population where the devastating impact bird flu had last year is still not fully understood.

Importantly, these modelled impacts are additional to the threats these seabirds already face – food shortages due to climate change and overfishing, being killed by fishing gear or invasive non-native species – threats that have seen Kittiwake numbers decline by 72% in Scotland between 1986 and 2016 – and new emerging threats such as the bird flu outbreak last year.

Populations of Gannets along with Kittiwakes, Razorbills, Guillemots and Puffins will be reduced by this windfarm. Image by Richard Carlyon (rspb-images.com) 

The predicted impacts are so severe and significant that it is deemed the development could affect the integrity and aims of at least eight SPAs. As a result, by law, the applicant must show that no less damaging options exist and then proposals can go ahead only when there’s reasons of overriding public interest and environmental compensation is secured.

We don’t believe the applicant has done enough to look at alternative less damaging areas to put the development. Or that the environmental compensation they’ve suggested for seabird colonies is of sufficient scale to compensate for the magnitude of the impacts. In addition, while we wholeheartedly support, and have campaigned for, Sandeel fishery closures, this measure it isn’t appropriate compensation. It’s needed to reduce pressures already faced by seabirds and doesn't remove the need to put windfarms in the right places.

There are already some terribly placed offshore windfarms in the Forth and Tay area. In 2017, Scottish Ministers concluded the impacts of those windfarms on seabirds were just within the limits of environmental acceptability – a position we continue to passionately disagree with. The health of our marine environment has not improved since then, so adding another windfarm in this area could push our seabirds to breaking point.

Offshore windfarms have an important part to play in transitioning to renewable energy but must be in the right places. Image by Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)

This is simply the wrong place for an offshore windfarm. The impacts on our globally important but already struggling seabirds would be catastrophic and completely unacceptable. That’s why we’re objecting strongly to this application. We hope that sense will be seen and the recommendation by the Marine Scotland Licensing Operations Team will be for Scottish Ministers to reject this.

Nature sustains us. It is essential for our survival, and we must protect it. It is critical that all development whether on land or offshore is done in the right way, in the right place and that our efforts to reach net zero to deal with the catastrophic impacts of climate change don’t have catastrophic impacts on nature.

Our Berwick Bank Casework webpage has more details and we will share updates as and when they happen here. 

Header photo: Close up of a gannet in flight. Image by Grahame Madge (rspb-images.com)