Wozep ecological programme

Wozep - the governmental ecological programme for offshore wind energy - aims to establish a deepening knowledge about the effects of offshore wind farms on birds, bats, marine mammals and their habitats. This know-how is indispensable when it comes to the large-scale development of offshore wind energy. For example, what will be its impact on vulnerable bird species? Is it possible to estimate what the effects will be on protected marine and coastal populations over a period of ten or twenty years? In order to build on this knowledge, longer-term research and monitoring is required. Wozep also carries out modelling of future scenarios whereby the construction and commissioning of wind farms in the North Sea is expected to expand on a much wider scale.

The knowledge acquired by Wozep is directly applied at the policy and implementation level, for example, in the KEC (the Framework for Assessing Ecological and Cumulative Effects) or in decisions taken regarding the exact location of offshore wind farms. This project is implemented by Rijkswaterstaat and commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.