Ørsted and Spoor to improve wind farm birdlife data

The bird monitoring tool, described by energy company Ørsted as cost-effective and highly scalable, will help support the company’s ambition to deliver net-positive biodiversity impact for all new projects from 2030.

Ørsted and venture capital firms Nysnø Climate Investments (Nysnø), Wiski Capital, Norrsken Foundation, and Antler have invested in Spoor AI via a seed funding round. Spoor is a ‘deeptech’ start-up which has built a specially designed artificial intelligence (AI) system to monitor and track birdlife at offshore wind farms.

Climate change is a big contributor toward biodiversity loss, and rapid energy transition will be key to halting and reversing this. But more new wind infrastructure means more interaction with the natural world, which climate actions seeks to protect.

Ørsted is looking for new ways to further improve its understanding of that interaction, to minimise potential negative impact alongside action to proactively enhance biodiversity.

By working with Spoor, Ørsted hopes to improve its understanding of how birds behave while travelling in the vicinity of its wind farms. With this knowledge, wind farm design can be further optimised in line with Ørsted’s biodiversity ambitions.