Could Berwick Bank windfarm have been better placed?

12,000 people have signed a petition to stop the development of one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms, Berwick Bank, off the coast of Scotland, all (or at least mostly) because of the seabirds.

I add 'mostly' because you never know when someone might be more interested in some of the other reasons given for fighting wind, for instance a general antipathy towards Net Zero, but are also jumping onto the bird issue. I add 'mostly' because we live in a world where with any issue there is always someone out there interested in weaponising it for their cause.

But anyway, those 12,000 people who care about the birds are a reminder of a tension in the debate around climate and environment. There is a crucial question around how we balance up the negative impacts on nature of the very infrastructure we are building to wean ourselves off fossil fuels against their benefits.

For me, Berwick Bank, which the Scottish Seabird Centre has said they believe will be the 'deadliest' windfarm in the world for birds, is a reminder that it’s hard to find a system of energy production or emissions removal or mitigation that comes without some impact on nature.

We are always trying to balance up negatives and positives - and that’s not easy, especially when answers that might otherwise be right are being delivered by a market-driven system oriented towards growth, and in a world as interested in creating demand as meeting it.

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The RSPB have long been concerned about the impact of the 300 turbine Berwick Bank farm on vital seabird feeding grounds and globally important sites like the Bass Rock, and have warned against the “catastrophic impact the project would have on our seabirds”.

But at the same time, the RSPB says it “strongly supports the development of renewable energy to tackle climate change, one of the greatest threats to wildlife".

However the charity notes that this "must not be at any cost”. “The Berwick Bank site," it says, "is incredibly important for some of our most threatened seabird species. There are many other places around our seas where offshore wind could be developed without such devastating impacts on seabirds.”

It also points out that the developer's own predictions are that thousands of guillemots, kittiwakes, gannets, razorbills and puffins will be killed over the project's lifetime, putting the conservation of these species at huge risk.

Let’s remember some of the contexts here. One is that we remain on course for sorry levels of global warming. The pace has nearly doubled since 2015, from 0.2C per decade to 0.35C per decade, according to a new report. Global fossil fuel emissions are still rising.

Following the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, people are making all kinds of statements in the name of energy security– on the one hand calling for more oil, on the other for more renewables. Neither of these are going to solve the problem immediately, but, in the long run, as the UK Climate Change Committee has said the total cost of meeting Net Zero is likely to be less than single fossil fuel price shock.

We know that renewables remain crucial in the shift away from the burning of fossil fuel – and offshore windfarms like Berwick Bank are part of that answer. But we also know that seabirds are impacted by climate change, as are countless other species and ecosystems, which is why the same organisations that worry about the impact of wind turbines on birds are concerned with the impact of climate too - and repeatedly stress that they are not against renewables.

So how do we weight the positives of wind turbines in terms of climate change, against their impact in terms of direct bird deaths? And what does that mean for Berwick Bank?

Winds of change on seabirds and Berwick Bank (Image: Derek McArthur/Colin Mearns)

The Scottish Seabird Centre has said: “This development threatens to kill tens of thousands of seabirds during it's lifetime. It’s simply the wrong place for an offshore wind farm.”

But it’s not easy to suddenly switch the location of a windfarm. The journey towards Berwick Bank has already been long and drawn out. It began in 2008, when the Crown Estate announced its third round of its offshore wind farm leasing program, and it represents the last part of the Firth of Forth zone to be developed.

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Studies have been done, plans redrawn, boundaries changed to “avoid areas identified as potentially relevant to ornithological receptors" and reduce overlap with an MPA or impact on shipping navigation and commercial fisheries. Research has been conducted into biodiversity net gain. Objections and warnings have been issued by NatureScot and RSPB. And still, weighing up the good and bad remains difficult.

Could Berwick Bank be in a better place for the protection of nature, less damaging to seabird populations? I’m absolutely sure it could, and that we will look back and agree that its approval did indeed, as charities said, represent a "dark day for seabirds".

But I am equally sure there would also be no perfect place. And that is part of the problem - not just for Berwick Bank, but other projects the world over.