Environmental examinations and environmental impact assessment for the offshore windfarm “ARKONA-BECKEN SÜDOST”
The offshore windfarm "ARKONA-BECKEN SÜDOST" is a project of Arkona Windpark Entwicklungsgesellschaft AWE. This windfarm planned in the Baltic Sea consists of 80 offshore wind energy converters of 5 MW performance each and in the long run may eventually represent an energy-economic replacement of the nuclear power station Greifswald, taken off the grid some years ago. The site of " ARKONA-BECKEN SÜDOST " is located at a distance of more than 35 km of the island of Rügen. The area is outside planned marine and natural protection areas. The site is a suitability area for offshore windfarming, dedicated in a separate formal land use planning process. The formal planning procecedure started in October 2001 with a scoping conference in Stralsund. The environmental investigation for the EIA started soon afterwards. The OECOS team conducted ornithological and marine mammal surveys for over three years, coordinated all other environmental investigations and summarized the individual results in an overall environmental impact assessment, an FFH compatibility study and a final report of the ecological baseline studies. The project was approved in the spring of 2006.