Technical Advisory
TBC's experts leverage their knowledge and experience to help clients tackle some of the thornier technical aspects of alignment with corporate targets, good international industry practice and lender standards.
Mitigation for wind power projects: We help clients design mitigation and monitoring to ensure a viable project that also meets lender requirements and stakeholder expectations. By combining world‑leading biodiversity expertise with deep sectoral experience, our team has supported flagship projects in emerging markets, such as the Kipeto Wind Farm in Kenya, and projects in high-risk migratory corridors, such as Egypt.
We bring proven methods, data‑driven insights, and develop guidance to help wind projects meet lender standards and global best practice from design through to operation. With specialist in-house expertise in birds and bats, we help clients reduce impacts, unlock financing, and operate with confidence.
Technical services we offer to wind power projects include:
- Collision Risk Modelling (CRM): are a key tool for estimating fatalities. CRMs combine species-specific information — including size, flight type, and flight speed — with turbine characteristics such as blade length, rotation speed, and layout to calculate collision risk. By identifying high-risk areas, CRMs guide planning decisions and inform the design of mitigation measures. They also allow for estimating the magnitude of residual impacts and inform the need for additional conservation act
- Shut Down on Demand (SDOD): The most effective mitigation to avoid bird collisions is turbine Shutdown on Demand (SDOD). Turbines can be temporarily stopped based on observers, technological systems such as cameras or radar, or a combination of both. The choice of approach depends on the species involved, wind farm characteristics, and operational or logistical constraints. SDOD reduces bird fatalities by limiting turbine operation during periods of elevated collision risk while allowing turbines to operate normally at other times. A key element of designing SDOD protocols is to minimise bird fatalities while limiting production losses for the developer
- Post Construction Fatality Monitoring (PCFM): is an essential part of assessing the actual impacts of wind farms on both birds and bats. Conducted after turbines are operational, PCFM evaluates collision rates and verifies the effectiveness of mitigation measures, including SDOD for birds and curtailment for bats. To ensure credible results, PCFM follows good international industry practice, including the latest guidelines. Surveys are designed to account for key sources of bias, such as observer efficiency — the likelihood that a carcass is detected — and carcass persistence – how long a carcass remains detectable before being removed by scavengers or decomposing. Correcting for these and other factors is critical to producing accurate estimates of fatalities. PCFM is also essential for adaptive management. By providing robust data on actual collision rates, it allows developers to evaluate and refine mitigation measures, adjusting operational strategies over time to further reduce fatalities. Through standardised monitoring and adaptive management, PCFM provides the data and insights needed to make informed decisions and manage bird and bat collision risks effectively.
- Biodiversity metrics to demonstrate not let loss/net gain: We develop metrics and monitoring programs that allow our clients to measure, manage and report their biodiversity ambitions. Our indicators and methods are decision-useful, transparent about assumptions and designed to support credible, verifiable outcomes whilst taking into account any site-constraints.
Our experts would be happy to discuss any technical challenges you may have with project development, please contact us.
