Offshore wind farms in Belgium

To contribute to reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses, Belgium needs to obtain 6% of the consumption of electricity in 2010 from renewable energy sources (European directive 2001/77/EC). The installation of windmills at sea can contribute to reaching this objective.

To build a wind farm, various permits must be obtained, including an environmental permit for the construction and the exploitation of the farm.

Projects

There are four projects for the construction of windmills in the Belgian part of the North sea: C-Power on the Thorntonbank, Belwind on the Bligh Bank, Northwind on the Lodewijkbank and Norther, south east of the Thorntonbank.

The C-Power wind farm has 60 windmills and is located at 27 kilometres off Zeebrugge. The park will be built in water of 12 to 27 metres deep and the turbines will be installed in an area of 18 km² in size. Work has started on land in 2007 with the construction of the first 6 foundations. In 2008 the first 6 windmills have been installed at sea. You can follow the activities on the website of C-Power.

With a capacity of 330 megawatt, the Belwind farm will deliver energy to 330,000 households. This wind farm, which is located 42 kilometres off the coast of Zeebrugge, is today the world's furthest offshore wind farm. The park will be built in water of 20 to 35 metres depth and the turbines will be installed in an area of 35 km² in size. You can follow the activities on the website of Belwind.

Northwind requested an environmental permit for the construction and exploitation of a wind farm of 144 to 216 MW. The project would be located on the Lodewijkbank at a distance of 38 km from the coast. MUMM studied the environmental impact study and annexes and submitted its own assessment of environmental impact and its advice to the State Secretary for North Sea Affairs on April 15, 2009. Northwind obtained the environmental permit on 19/11/09. They will start the construction in 2011. You can follow the activities on the website of Northwind.

Norther received the environmental permit for the offshore wind farm south east of the Thorntonbank. With a capacity of 258 to 420 megawatt, the Norther farm will deliver energy to 230.000 to 430,000 households. The wind farm is located at a distance of 21 from the coast of Zeebrugge. The park will be built in water of 14 to 30 metres deep and the turbines will be installed in an area of 44 km² in size. Construction of the wind farm will start in 2014. The wind farm will start delivering electricity by the beginning of 2015.

A brief overview of these projects, including some technical details, the proposed location areas, the status of the project and available documents, is given in the following table and map.

You can consult the maps of the current situation in the Atlas.

Legislation

Before being granted or denied, every project has to pass through an environmental permit procedure (general overview in Dutch or French), persuant to the law on the protection of the marine environment (20 January 1999) (in Dutch and French) and two Royal Decrees. These two royal decrees, and thus the permit procedure, have recently been modified (Belgian Official Journal of 17 September 2003). Briefly, this legislation includes an environmental impact assessment (EIA) by the MUMM. This EIA is based on an environmental impact study (EIS) submitted by the applicant. In the framework of its evaluation the MUMM can, if necessary, carry out, or order additional studies and research.

The public is also consulted: during 45 days a public consultation is organised in Belgium and if impacts could cross international borders, consultation with the concerned country is arranged. Based on this EIA and on the results of the public consultation, the MUMM advises the federal Minister responsible for the marine environment. In this advice the MUMM gives an opinion on the acceptability of the project concerning the marine environment and on the conditions which the project must fulfil to be acceptable. The Minister decides whether the environmental permit should be granted.

The period between the submission of the request and the final decision of the Belgian Minister competent for the North Sea, takes about 6 to 8 months depending on the complexity of the document.

In addition to the environmental permit procedure, there is a procedure for granting a domain concession (Royal Decree 20 December 2000, published in the Belgian Official Journal 30 December 2000, changed by the royal decree of 28 September 2008, Belgian Official Journal of October 30th, 2008) for the proposed project area. Requests are submitted to the CREG (Commission for the Regulation of the Electricity and the Gas), which advises the Minister of Energy.

A domain concession can be granted before an environmental permit is granted. However, the concession is not valid until the environmental permit is granted.

There is also a permit procedure for the installation of the cables (Royal Decree 12 March 2002, published in the Belgian Official Journal 9 May 2002, PDF, 8pp., 69KB). Requests are submitted to the FPS for Economic Affairs, who advises the Minister of Energy.

Monitoring

In the coming years, a few hundred windmills will appear in the designated part of the Belgian North Sea. The consequences of the installation of windmills on the marine ecosystem have to be monitored. As foreseen in the environmental permit, MUMM started a monitoring programme to estimate the positive and negative effects of the windmills at sea. Reports (2009, 2010, 2011) are available.

Grontmij Vlaanderen carried out a sociological sea view survey regarding the monitoring programme for offshore windmill parks.

More information will be gathered in the coming years: long time information is necessary to differentiate between the natural variations and the effects caused by the human activities.

For this monitoring, MUMM collaborates with INBO, ILVO, Marine Biology Section of Ghent University, Renard Centre of Marine Geology of Ghent University.