Orsted reveal net-zero plans for Isle of Man windfarm

Tindle News

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00:00There's a lot of talk about environmental protection, a lot of questions coming up in

00:04the community consultation around protecting the environment. If we step back a bit from

00:08this project and just look at what's happening globally, we know we have a climate crisis.

00:13We are tackling that with building out renewable energy, by improving energy efficiency, but

00:19there is another crisis and it's only starting to be talked about and that's the biodiversity

00:23crisis. I'm working on both actually, with Orsted, not only climate change and clean

00:29power, but also what we do about the biodiversity loss that we see happening at an increasing

00:34rate around the world, which frankly is even more scary than the climate crisis in terms

00:40of the impact it's going to have on us all if we don't address it. So in Orsted we made

00:44a commitment three years ago that we would deliver all of our projects that commission

00:49from 2030 to have a net positive impact on biodiversity. It's a huge challenge, we've

00:55been working on it for the last three years, we've still got more work to do, how do you

00:58measure it, how do you then deliver it, and if anyone's interested they can have a look

01:02on our website, there's a whole load of pilot programmes we're running around the world,

01:07in Europe, in South East Asia, in North America, to learn what we can actually do on the ground,

01:13or more specifically in the sea, to deliver those positive biodiversity outcomes and we're

01:19going to roll that out because we can see that we need to tackle both climate and biodiversity

01:23crises by building offshore wind and we think that's the right thing to do. That does mean

01:28because Morvanin is a project that we'll commission after 2030 that we are going to

01:33deliver a net positive biodiversity outcome. We're already engaging with a number of environmental

01:40NGOs and others on the island and more widely to look at how that might happen and John,

01:44I don't know, perhaps you could say a bit more about that. Yeah I mean some of the stakeholders

01:49here in the island have actually, credit to them, are extremely innovative when it comes to

01:53this crisis. I mean you mentioned that it's only just coming into the narrative now I have to say,

01:59the likes of Macleod Wildlife Trust have been at the forefront of talking about this crisis coming

02:03and how important it is that we make sure we preserve nature through both crises and the

02:08impact that climate change is going to have on habitats cannot be underestimated. So I think

02:14some of the opportunities we've got in the Isle of Man are to do things a bit differently. We have

02:18the ability to have our own, with our own legal system, with our own individual stakeholders and

02:24a huge amount of marine space given the 12 nautical mile limit. I think there's a real

02:29chance to do some really exciting stuff in the marine space. So we've hosted visits for

02:33stakeholders, we've engaged with them through the process of Mervannan but actually more broadly

02:37when we've been rolling out the Orsted strategy for biodiversity we've been having a lot of good

02:41engagement there. So it's actually quite exciting for the Isle of Man to lead the way potentially

02:46faster than some other nations can do or have been doing. So that is something we'll continue

02:52to work on and I'm so conscious of the UNESCO biosphere status. We've got to make sure that we

02:56have a sustainable development. We think we do some of the most sustainable development there is

03:01out there but it's really important that we engage with all the people involved in that to ensure

03:06that it's not in jeopardy at all. Could you explain what net positive means? Yes, so to put it in a

03:13nutshell we are committing to leaving the marine environment in a better state after we built and

03:19operated our wind farm than the state it was in when we arrived. It's as simple as that. How you do it

03:25very much depends on the biodiversity, the ecosystem where we're building the wind farm

03:30and where the cable route goes so it's too early to say what specific actions we'll take to deliver

03:35that but in essence it means leaving the environment in a better state than we find it.

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