Case Study
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Floating Offshore Wind Environmental Response to Stressors (FLOWERS)
There is uncertainty regarding the potential impacts of floating offshore wind (FLOW) structures on the marine environment. This uncertainty raises concern among stakeholders and regulators, which could increase the potential for delays with FLOW developments to address stakeholder concerns or the potential for barriers to consent to arise.
The FLOWERS project forms part of the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change programme, led by The Crown Estate in partnership with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. The Offshore Wind Evidence and Change programme is an ambitious strategic research and data-led programme. Its aim is to facilitate the sustainable and coordinated expansion of offshore wind to help meet the UK’s commitments to low carbon energy transition whilst supporting clean, healthy, productive and biologically diverse seas.
The FLOWERS project started in July 2022 and completed in August 2025. It was led by Cefas with the Scottish Government and was commissioned to improve knowledge of poorly understood stressors identified during the assessment of environmental impacts for floating offshore wind (FLOW). The outputs from the FLOWERS project will support the environmental knowledge base towards the future transition towards floating offshore wind technology to meet the UK’s low carbon energy transition ambition. FLOWERS also address the OWEC Programme theme of: Improving the understanding of environmental impacts and benefits.
The project looked at three topics that have a relatively poor knowledge base with the aim to improve the level of confidence in addressing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) requirements based on evaluation of the scientific evidence supported by modelling (where possible) for each of the topics in the context of floating offshore wind.
The project consisted of three Work Packages (WP):
- Scour of mooring lines - which modelled the physical consequences of the hydrodynamic changes associated with the scour from FLOW mooring lines.
- Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) – which modelled and measured EMFs and developed an approach to assess the likelihood of encounter between receptor species and EMFs emitted by subsea power cables. [NB - This work built on a previous OWEC-funded EMF workshop.]
- Multiple Stressor Framework - which investigated how separate pressure-receptor interactions can be integrated into a single framework for environmental impact assessments.
The FLOWERS project was focused on UK waters, however the outputs of all the WPs are generally applicable: the modelling and the frameworks produced could be applied in any region where floating offshore wind is being developed. We anticipate these outputs will help inform decision-making processes and support the deployment of floating offshore wind from demonstration level to full commercial scale.
All outputs from this project are are available to download from the links listed below:
