**1. Introduction**

Currently Catalonia, as well as the surrounding regions and countries, faces a situation of climate emergency, a situation that has been recognized both by the Generalitat de Catalunya [1], the Spanish Government [2], and the European Parliament [3].

It is hence a situation that involves the adoption of urgent measures to reduce the carbon emissions for which our energy and production model is responsible. It is therefore not only advisable, but essential, among other actions, to propose important changes in Catalonia's energy generation model, which involve the progressive replacement of nonrenewable sources, which currently provide more than the 80% of the electricity generated, with renewable sources, including offshore wind. This strategy has been developed in Catalonia through the *Pacte Nacional per a la Transició Energètica de Catalunya* (National Agreement for the Energy Transition of Catalonia) and has been embodied in the Preliminary Draft of the Energy Transition Law, which contemplates large, medium, and small-scale renewable electricity generation, mainly by local sources (Strategy n◦ 12) [4].

**Citation:** Diez-Caballero, K.; Troiteiro, S.; García-Alba, J.; Vidal, J.R.; González, M.; Ametller, S.; Juan, R. Environmental Compatibility of the Parc Tramuntana Offshore Wind Project in Relation to Marine Ecosystems. *J. Mar. Sci. Eng.* **2022**, *10*, 898. https://doi.org/10.3390/ jmse10070898

Academic Editors: Barbara Zanuttigh and Eugen Rusu

Received: 18 May 2022 Accepted: 21 June 2022 Published: 29 June 2022 Corrected: 26 December 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

According to the energy prospective studies for Catalonia with a 2050 horizon (PROEN-CAT 2050) [5], in order to meet the energy and environmental objectives Catalonia has been committed to comply, by 2030 it will be necessary to incorporate up to 12,000 MW of renewable production into the system (of which 1000 MW should correspond to offshore wind), a figure that should grow to more than 61,000 MW by 2050 (with a total contribution of 3500 MW from offshore wind). This new renewable capacity should make it possible to supply a demand characterized by a greater electrification of the economy, facing the expected closure of nuclear power plants and drastically reducing the current dependence on non-renewable sources, of foreign origin and with a high impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Once the need to develop offshore wind energy in Catalonia has been assumed, its spatial development should be approached on the basis of criteria that incorporate and allow the complexity of the marine environment to be assessed, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each area and the benefits and impacts of offshore wind farms on the whole of the territory and Catalan society.

Marine spatial planning plays an important role in this task. In recent years, the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (*MITERD*) has been working, in coordination with many other Spanish state administrations and each of the autonomous communities of the Atlantic and Mediterranean arc, to develop Marine Spatial Management Plans (POEM) [6], which are currently under review following the presentation of their draft for public information and consultation, in order to incorporate the relevant modifications resulting from the allegations received, as a step prior to their approval by Royal Decree.

It should be noted that these plans are not arbitrary or based solely on economic or territorial interests, but that their approach responds to the assessment of a set of criteria that ensure that the combined pressure of activities in the marine environment is maintained at levels compatible with the achievement of good environmental status (GES), and that they do not compromise the capacity of marine ecosystems to respond to changes induced by human activity. An ecosystem approach has therefore been followed for its definition, considering both the interactions between land and sea, as well as the expected changes resulting from climate change.

Besides that, the challenges that the development of offshore wind in Catalonia and Spain face are not few, largely due to the newness of this type of project in Spain. One of these challenges is the adaptation of new projects to a constantly evolving regulatory framework to incorporate this new technology into the Spanish energy model, but also with a certain social rejection, characteristic of any change in strategy and implementation of new technologies for the first time in the country. The influence of this regulatory framework, especially regarding the environmental impact assessment process of this kind of project was already analyzed by Salvador et al. (2018) [7].

From the point of view of the possible social reticence to the development of offshore wind power in Catalonia by some economic stakeholders and some members of the scientific community, the social debate on this new technology is often justified on the basis of the lack of specific references of similar projects in operation in the Mediterranean that allow to accurately foresee the possible impacts that this type of projects can generate in the area of implementation, generating uncertainty.

While onshore and fixed founded offshore wind farms are quite widely installed around the world and provide relevant references on their impacts on the environment along their entire life-cycle (see e.g., Verma et al., 2022 [8] or Kouloumpis and Azapagic, 2022 [9]), and the adverse environmental impacts of different wind generation technologies have been already assessed (mainly in onshore context) [10], there are still many effects that cannot be directly extrapolated to floating offshore wind farms, producing a significant knowledge gap regarding the impacts of this technology in the environment.

This lack of applicable references means that some voices tend to assimilate as their own, without a rigorous analysis, other offshore wind experiences in the North Sea or the Baltic, where both the technological characteristics of wind farms (mostly with fixed foundations) and the environment (depth, dynamics, ecosystems, etc.) are very different from those of the projects proposed in Catalonia.

It should be noted in this regard that, although there are currently no floating offshore wind projects in operation, the French Government has already taken the first step to be the pioneers in the Mediterranean, approving the installation of a pilot floating offshore wind farm, called "*Eoliennes Flottantes du Golfe du Lion*" (EFGL), and two other pilot farms ("*Eolmed*" and "*Provence Grand Large*") are in progress.

The EFGL wind farm consists of three 10 MW turbines, to be installed 16 km off the coast of Leucate, and within the perimeter of a protected area of the Natura 2000 Network, the marine natural park of the Gulf of Lion, the due Environmental Impact Study having been carried out and its impact considered compatible with the conservation objectives of this protected area. The other two wind farms are also planned with three turbines each, with power ratings between 8 and 10 MW, and at a distance from the coast of between 14 and 18 km.

In addition, on 14 March 2022, the French government confirmed its intention to build an additional 500 MW of floating offshore wind power in the Mediterranean by 2030.

### **2. Motivation**

In this context, given the urgency of developing new renewable generation projects, due to the limited time available to meet emission reduction targets, and the periods required for the processing and technical development of projects, several developers specialized in offshore wind have begun to work, both in Catalonia and in other regions of Spain, to respond in the imminent future to the demand for these types of facilities.

One of these developments, pioneered in Catalonia in terms of technical maturity and coordination with the territory, Parc Tramuntana, proposes the installation of a floating offshore wind farm off the coast of the Empordà.

This project is being developed with the premise of integrating the participation of the territory from the earliest stages of conception, applying all the way and in all aspects of the design the best existing practices at the state-of-the-art level to ensure compliance with the so-called Precautionary Principle, which supports the adoption of protective measures against the possibility of a technological risk to the environment, without yet having a definitive scientific proof of such risk.

Likewise, the project, which has not yet been submitted for environmental processing, will follow all the way the environmental and administrative procedures required under current legislation, which includes the preparation and processing of the due Environmental Impact Study, including the process of public information and consultation with all the competent administrations.

The process leading to the selection of the most suitable site and the design proposal of the offshore wind facility has been and will continue to be a living and evolving process. It has started from an initial approach, based on the energy demand, the availability of connection to the electricity grid, the conditioning factors imposed by the legislation in force (environmental, sectorial, town planning, etc.), maritime and airspace planning and the characteristics of the site, and has evolved (in size and technical solutions) through the incorporation of additional requirements and conditioning factors derived from the conversations held with different stakeholders of the territory and society.

This report analyzes some of the aspects and potential impacts of the project that have generated some debate in the scientific community. This is the case of the recent publication of the article by Lloret et al. (2022) in the journal Science of the Total Environment [11], intending to serve as a reference for the evaluation of environmental impacts related to floating wind technology in the western Mediterranean. This purpose is also oriented towards introducing accuracy in the data analysis and promoting the debate with some sectors who systematically express opposition to this type of renewable generation project without a detailed analysis of its impacts on the environment.
