Environmental impact assessment for the offshore wind farm “NÖRDLICHER GRUND”
The contractor for this project is GEO mbH (Society for Energy and Ecology), together with SYNERGIS GmbH. The scheduled location in the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea is approximately 86 km WNW of Sylt and around 108 km from Helgoland. The site has no intersection with protected areas. The Federal Government (2002) regards this marine area as possibly suitable for wind energy production and has started a formal planning procedure to dedicate the area to this use. The formal planning procedure started with the scoping conference in November 2002. 87 offshore wind energy converters with an overall performance of 360 MW were planned as a first pilot step. The energy yield of the pilot phase was 1,693,000 MWh, which corresponds to the annual energy requirement of approximately 500,000 average households. OECOS GmbH advised the clients on the coordination of the necessary environmental surveys and summarized the specific investigation results in general impact assessment reports.