Environmental impact and mitigation
Designing marine renewable-energy projects to avoid, minimise and mitigate environmental impacts throughout their full lifecycle.
Our approach
Environmental protection throughout the project lifecycle
Pliosaur Energy is developing marine-energy technology intended to generate clean, predictable electricity while reducing environmental impacts wherever practical.
Our approach is to avoid, minimise and mitigate potential impacts from early site assessment and design through installation, operation, maintenance and decommissioning.
Project development
Early environmental screening
Pliosaur Energy projects are expected to undergo early environmental and socio-economic screening.
This process helps identify sensitive habitats, protected species, community interests, navigational considerations and other local factors that could be affected by project activities.
The findings can then inform site selection, engineering design, environmental assessment and consultation with regulators and affected communities.
Installation
Low-impact marine-energy design
Our technology includes design features intended to reduce the environmental effects of installation and operation.
The use of floating turbines and recoverable deadweight anchors can reduce or remove the need for piling. This may help limit seabed disturbance, construction noise and disruption to the local marine environment.
Only limited seabed trenching is expected to be required, while the floating structures, mooring equipment and anchors are intended to be recoverable during decommissioning.
Marine species
Fish and marine-mammal protection
The turbine is designed with a maximum rotor-blade tip speed of approximately 3 m/s.
This comparatively slow movement is intended to provide fish and marine mammals with more time to detect and avoid the rotor than may be available around faster-moving turbine blades.
Additional protective measures include blade-edge protection and screening intended to restrict larger animals from approaching the rotor.
A passage beneath the rotor is intended to allow smaller fish to move through the structure without passing through the rotating blades.
The effectiveness of these measures will require assessment and validation through appropriate environmental studies, modelling and project-specific monitoring.
Biodiversity
Ecosystem management and environmental learning
Pliosaur Energy aims to understand and manage potential effects on biodiversity and local ecosystems throughout each project's lifecycle.
Environmental assessment and monitoring should be proportionate to the location, scale and potential effects of each development.
Learning from project development, testing and operation will be used to improve future design, deployment and maintenance practices.
Resource management
Waste reduction and marine-debris recovery
Our objective is to avoid unnecessary waste and to reduce, reuse or recycle materials wherever practical.
The technology may also support marine-debris recovery by intercepting floating waste at the overtopping screen before it enters the reservoir and turbine.
Collected material could then be removed during maintenance visits and transferred ashore for appropriate recycling or disposal.
Climate contribution
Lifecycle carbon impact
Marine energy can contribute to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by supplying renewable electricity that might otherwise be generated from fossil fuels.
Manufacturing, construction, installation, maintenance and decommissioning will nevertheless produce their own emissions.
The net carbon benefit of a project will therefore depend on generating performance, operating life, materials, construction methods, maintenance requirements and the electricity generation that it displaces.
These effects should ultimately be quantified through a project-specific lifecycle assessment.
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