The Moray Firth Regional Advisory Group (“MFRAG”) has been set up to ensure that appropriate and effective monitoring of the impacts of the developments are undertaken to satisfy the requirements of the section 36 (“s.36”) consent and marine licence conditions of Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm Limited ("BOWL"), Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Limited (“Moray East”) and Moray Offshore Windfarm (West) Limited (“Moray West”).
Consents were granted by the Scottish Ministers under s.36 of the Electricity Act 1989 to construct and operate the BOWL Electricity Generating Station with a maximum generating capacity of 750 megawatts (“MW”), the Moray East Telford, Stevenson and MacColl Offshore Wind Farm Electricity Generating Stations with a combined maximum generating capacity of 1,116 MW and the Moray West Electricity Generating Station with a generating capacity of around 850 MW.
More information on the projects can be found on the developments’ webpages following the links below:
- For BOWL on https://www.beatricewind.com/
- For Moray East on http://www.morayoffshore.com/moray-east/the-project/
- For Moray West on http://www.morayoffshore.com/moray-west/the-project/
Under the conditions of the s.36 consents and marine licences, developments within the Moray Firth must submit to the Scottish Ministers for approval an Environmental Management Plan (“EMP”) and a Project Environment Monitoring Programme (“PEMP”), which have been developed, reviewed and agreed through the MFRAG.
In addition to advising on and agreeing the EMP and PEMP, the MFRAG encourages collaboration with developers monitoring programmes to provide more strategic outputs, it will review raw data and reports from the monitoring to provide advice to the Scottish Ministers. The MFRAG will advise whether the monitoring activities are aligned with Scottish Government and academic research in marine renewables and other relevant areas through liaison with Scottish Marine Energy Research (“ScotMER”).
Monitoring requirements are incorporated into conditions of s.36 consents and/or marine licences in order to:
- validate, or reduce uncertainty in predictions on environmental impacts recorded in supporting Environment Impact Assessments (“EIA”) and Habitats Regulation Assessments (“HRA”);
- provide evidence on the effectiveness of mitigation measures; and
- allow identification of any unforeseen consequences.
For more information about the MFRAG please see the Moray Firth Regional Advisory Group Terms of Reference which can be found in the ToRs tab below.
Developer monitoring reports available on this website present preliminary results from completed surveys. Other monitoring and research will also inform our understanding of the impacts from offshore windfarms on various receptors and therefore these monitoring reports should be considered along with other relevant reports and research. Any changes to policy or casework processes as a result of research findings will be clearly communicated through appropriate channels by Marine Scotland.