An Integrated Risk Framework for Large Scale Deployments of Renewable Energy

Assessing the potential environmental and human effects of deploying renewable energy along our coasts, on the Outer Continental Shelf, and in the Great Lakes requires a new risk paradigm. Evaluating potential risks requires a consistent program of research over time that collects relevant data by each sectoral area, such as bat and bird collisions, entanglement with mammals and fish, safety within shipping lanes, etc. Data collection alone, however, will not lead to better decisionmaking. Arriving at a broad and integrated risk profile of environmental and human effects is beyond a linear problem or a scientific decision. It becomes a political decision that must take into account the scientific evidence, comparison to other energy supply options, and stakeholder and public concerns. Risk assessment is not a new approach as it is applied throughout the federal government. The renewable energy area needs to develop and apply a risk assessment framework to support better decisions for deployment. The current approach evaluates potential impacts, sector by sector, or with a National Energy Policy Act (NEPA) document prepared by a federal agency or private developer. This site or project specific analyses are central to a better understanding of risk, but again it does not help the decisionmaker. The decisionmaker needs to better understand the broad spectrum of risk across all potential sites. Though the analyses may be incomplete, expert judgments can determine the level of significance and the research gaps. While renewable energy deployments are small today, marine renewable energy deployments are planned in the ocean over the next decade within North America and large deployment goals are expected in Europe. Now is the time to construct an integrated risk framework that evaluates the sectoral impacts, compares across these impacts, and then compares them to other energy supply options. A central lesson of a risk framework is that risks (sector effects) must be compared across potential effects to develop a transparent evaluation of temporal and spatial impacts of a site or a region. An evaluation of one sector separate from the others leads to skewed perceptions of significant risks. This integrated risk framework would also lead to effective siting strategies that would be based on mitigating the most important risks and employing cost-effective adaptive management practices wherever possible. While the nation moves forward in deploying renewable energy, lessons learned and new data will trigger new problems and new solutions to the potential impacts on the coastal landscape and within the marine environment. This integrated risk framework is presented graphically below to identify the specific analytical steps as well as how these activities will lead to better decisionmaking and smarter siting strategies (see Figure 1).