Environmental Sensitivity Modeling and Site Characterization

This paper examines an environmental weighting tool developed for site assessment of New York offshore wind development and discusses future applications of sensitivity weighting for site identification and assessment as part of the development of other renewable energy projects across different geographic locations. As part of New York State's Offshore Wind Master Plan, Ecology and Environment, Inc. (E & E), with direction from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), developed a weighted sensitivity model to evaluate the relative risk of developing offshore wind infrastructure. This relative risk assessment compared the potential impacts, or "stressors," to selected biological marine resources, or "receptors," from activities that may occur during the pre-construction, construction, and post-construction phases of offshore wind energy development off the coast of New York. The overall approach was to first establish relative risk matrices by conducting a literature synthesis and risk assessment. These matrices characterized risk and potential impacts to each selected marine resource, incorporating vulnerability of the marine resource and probability of the impact. This approach differs from density-based risk assessments and allows for the comparison of risk associated with different phases of development. Based on the resultant risk assessment matrices, regulatory context, permitting requirements, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recommendations, seasonality, and other relevant factors, sensitivity weight values were determined for the identified receptor groups for each phase of offshore wind development and applied using a weighted sum geospatial analysis model to produce maps of relative sensitivity throughout the state's area of analysis. The high-level sensitivity mapping analysis identified seasonal shifts in regions of relatively higher or lower sensitivity although certain regions showed consistent environmental sensitivity, such as the continental shelf slope and Hudson Canyon. Since the sensitivity weighting is a high-level analysis, it can be adapted to other types of projects, such as marine hydrokinetic turbines and wave generators. This paper will discuss how changes in anticipated development activities and geographic shifts to other regions could affect the presence of stressors on marine resources and subsequent risk weighting assignments. It will also discuss how to add or remove other biological resources from the analysis and how to incorporate certain human resource data while presenting the potential outcomes of these changes. Due to the granularity of the input data, this analysis is not appropriate for fine scale site selection. It is also important to note that areas of higher sensitivity do not preclude development, but merely indicate higher sensitivity and greater risk for developers. Therefore, discussion will conclude with recommendations for generating the most meaningful results to project development and using these outputs for efficiently siting projects in a cost-effective way.