Background
Achieving the UK’s goals of decarbonising the power sector requires connecting often remote renewable energy sources to where the energy is required.
Iberdrola’s East Anglia ONE in the North Sea is one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world, with over 100 turbines capable of generating over 700 mW. The onshore route of this Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project involved almost 40 km of onshore cable from the coastal landfall near the Deben Estuary in Suffolk, to the proposed converter station west of Ipswich.
Scope of services
Following planning approval, we delivered all the pre-construction ecological mitigation works to a tight construction timescale, working closely with the Iberdrola team.
We delivered field surveys for:
- Badgers.
- Water voles.
We implemented mitigation works for:
- Great crested newts.
- Reptiles.
- Badgers.
Across four sections of the route (totaling 5km), we carried out great crested newt translocations and badger sett mitigation, under licence from Natural England. We closed more than 45 badger setts, and designed and constructed an artificial badger sett.
Impact
We demonstrated our ability to provide ecology support on large linear infrastructure projects, for the whole project life from initial routing stages to assessment and construction, while providing pragmatic ecological site solutions.