Pilot Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters Marine Spatial Plan. Regional Locational Guidance.

Executive Summary

• The Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters ( PFOW) area offers an unparalleled opportunity of exploiting energy from wind, wave and tidal stream to generate electrical power in close proximity to the Orkney Islands and the North coast of Scotland.
• This opportunity will also mean challenges for developers and licensing authorities in balancing the needs of a growing industry with other users of the marine environment.
• This Regional Locational Guidance collates information from a wide variety of sources to assist the wind, wave and tidal energy developers in situating their developments.
• This document will be one of a suite of supporting documents for the pilot PFOW Marine Spatial Plan.
• Spatial data information layers have been collected and used to illustrate the likely interactions that developers and licensing authorities will have to consider when initiating developments in the PFOW area.
• Fishing concerns will be one of the main considerations given the overlap of potential development areas and the highly active crab creeling industry that takes place in the PFOW.
• Environmental factors such as seal species will require particular attention given the sensitivity of some of these populations in this area and the uncertain effect of developments on their habitat.
• This Regional Locational Guidance is one of a range of tools that can be used to choose sites of maximum opportunity and minimum constraint but is not intended to be a stand-alone method of doing so.