Offshore wind development in the UK comes with a quid pro quo: developers reap the energy profits, but the research and data it’s built on belongs to the people.
A group of researchers in Melbourne want the same thing to happen in Australia.
But for that to happen there is years of work ahead to design a system that works for developers, standardised data formats that work for researchers, and a price tag that governments can sell to constituents.
“The first part is we have to recognise that this requires coordination among all the key stakeholders,” says Shiaohuey Chow, engineer and director of the Australian Centre for Offshore Wind Energy (ACOWE).
“I’m talking about government, regulators, offshore wind developers, researchers, and community. The second part is we need a robust governance framework. The third one is a standardised data collection protocol and method for nationwide monitoring and evaluation. Because different developers, different consultants, contractors will have different formats.
“Lastly, we require a national data-sharing infrastructure to enable open access to data.”
Chow’s vision is for a database that incorporates all elements of data generated in the pursuit of offshore wind, from which whales are migrating and where, to cultural values and community data, noise, archaeology, and geophysical, and stores it in a standardised format.
Adding this initial data to ongoing monitoring after operations start would create a bank of open source information over time, opening new avenues of research as well as informing how future development might happen.
It’s a big vision – one that took the UK a decade to get right before officially launching the Marine Data Exchange in 2013 – which is why Australia must start now, Chow believes.
She’s not alone.
AECOM environment director David Hyett says government guidance on what offshore surveys need to include is “limited” and existing data is “patchy”.
“I’d agree with the recent report from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. They say that to establish a coordinated knowledge base, standardised data collection protocols and methods are needed,” Hyett told the recent Australian Offshore Wind Industry forum in Melbourne.
“A consistent approach to data collection and analysis will help create strong regional monitoring and evaluation of impacts and benefits of offshore wind projects.”
The report, which was put together by ACOWE for the society, calls for long-term government funding and national leadership of public and private sector marine environmental, social, and cultural research, and national open data-sharing infrastructure, among other things.
It says Australia urgently needs baseline assessments in each offshore wind zone versus controls to measure changes over time and design mitigation strategies for the environmental impacts.
“International experience highlights the importance of collecting 3–5 years of baseline data before construction,” the report said, pushing for an overarching coordinator to integrate the various public research and developer-led studies.
Australia’s first official offshore wind development zone was formally declared in the Bass Strait off the coast of Gippsland in Victoria in December 2022.
Five others followed, with two off the coast of New South Wales (NSW), another for Victoria, and one each for Tasmania and Western Australia.Â
The million dollar pilot
An open data model is being designed and tested in Gippsland.
A $1 million, two year project is looking into how to set up data, analytics and governance infrastructure for environmental impact assessments in Gippsland.
The case study will be a foundation for scaling up to a national level, says Australian Research Data Commons, which is leading the project.
The plan is to give marine researchers access to a huge new dataset, governments information they can use to make decisions about future offshore developments, and create good quality data on how big infrastructure projects impact on communities.
For industry, the benefits lie in data supply chain models that could speed up – and more importantly streamline – approval timelines, reducing the cost of development.
Australia can look overseas to see what might work, but the unique ocean environment, fisheries and species here mean a straight copy-paste from international models won’t work.
“It’s important to recognise that Australia has some unique considerations, so we probably need to improve on what has been done elsewhere,” Chow says.
“One danger is when you speak to people, they always say that offshore wind is established in Europe. Why not just copy what they do? The reality is our marine mammals are different. We have a unique seabed and cultural heritage considerations. We have very different political structures. We can learn from others but we need to also establish our own standards and best practice.”
The models Australia could build on are already out there, both around the world and locally.
A best practice guidance paper from the National Environmental Science Program identified seven different models from overseas that Australia could pull idea from, and says the offshore oil and gas regulator NOPSEMA and the Offshore Infrastructure Regulator Research Strategy (2024-2027) already provide some guidance on how to fund, design, and run offshore projects.
It also and cited Ark Energy’s onshore Gullen Range wind farm as a good example of what a company in Australia is already doing to publicly share monitoring data, building social licence while supporting conservation efforts
Nothing to see here
Chow and ACOWE are pitching the idea of a data library to governments around Australia.
But the responses given to Renew Economy indicate a less than enthusiastic reception.
“The department is working with offshore wind industry licence holders to explore options for data standards and collection, including consideration of approaches used overseas,” reads a statement from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.
However, the recent announcement about Western Australia feasibility licences by energy minister Chris Bowen included a single line saying the federal government is “investigating… establishing arrangements for data sharing, and enabling public comments on management plans for commercial projects”.
The Victorian government is aware of a pilot project currently underway in Gippsland, as well as similar research being conducted by the National Environmental Science Program and CSIRO.
“Working with the Commonwealth Government to enable this nationally significant industry is critical, and we welcome any sharing of information that is appropriate to achieve this,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Convince us it’s good for business
The other key stakeholders are the offshore wind developers themselves, which are paying for the research to happen.
Erin Coldham, head of development with the company behind Gippsland’s flagship project Star of the South, says there is a lot of merit in a data-sharing system but that it would have to be built to protect certain types of sensitive data.
Data such as geotechnical or meteorological research which inform where a turbine will be placed and how it will perform is the kind of information developers are keen to protect, at least until they have offtake agreements locked in.
But sharing other data, such as marine surveys of migratory species, would help avoid duplication by every developer.
“It makes sense for this to be led by government and contributed to by government agencies, ocean businesses, and researchers,” Coldham says.
“As an offshore wind developer, we want to contribute to an improved scientific understanding of the environment.
“To enable this, it would be important for the design of a data-sharing system to consider factors such as the treatment of any commercially sensitive data for offshore wind projects being developed in a competitive environment, access to culturally or environmentally sensitive data, and appropriate data collection requirements which enable standardised reporting while remaining flexible and reasonable.”
No other developer representatives were comfortable at this stage of their work to talk on the record about a hypothetical data library.
But one comment was that collecting this data costs money — many millions of dollars for each study.
And because developers are paying from their own funds to collate this research, a discount on fees or similar would be appreciated in return for handing it over for the public good — especially for the first movers, whose work later projects will be able to benefit from.
How it works in the UK
Four countries have data libraries for offshore wind: the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
But according to Chow, the only relevant one to Australia is the UK.
This is because the others own the data already: the governments did the research themselves in order to sell licences with a data pack attached.
It’s one reason why Australia’s offshore wind licences are comparatively very cheap because the companies have to do that legwork themselves – notwithstanding the research already conducted by Geotechnical Australia which informed where the zones would be, and data from offshore oil and gas drilling.
The UK launched the idea of the MDE in 2003, but it took a decade to get developers onboard and design a standardised system that everyone could use.
It was also only possible because the UK government made data sharing a requirement of feasibility licences – something that is not included in Australian contracts.
“Developers aren’t being compelled to provide it and then it’s kind of a q of will they voluntarily provide it?” says Naomi Campbell, a partner with consultancy Energise Renewables who used to work in the UK offshore sector.
“If you’re looking at a voluntary approach in Australia, you’ve got to look for a win-win, it can’t just be a ‘give us your data, it’s in the public good’, because like any private business they have interests, not just in doing the right thing but getting a return on investment.
“You’ve got to come up with something that serves the purpose of the researchers and the purpose of the developers.”
The Crown Estate, which manages the MDE, knows that some data has commercial value especially when it comes to competition around deals such as offtake agreements.
It means information such as bird counts will be entered once a year, but wind and geotechnical data are embargo’d from the public for a year, or more if the developer can make a case for longer.
There is also no clause in Australian feasibility licences that says developers must collaborate on certain pieces of research as in the UK, a factor which would lead to more standardisation of data, Campbell says.
If developers were to sign up retrospectively to a data sharing system, that still means reformatting gigabytes of data into a standard format.
The UK’s system held 260 terabytes of data in 2023, a decade after launching.
