A Review of the Environmental Impacts for Marine and Hydrokinetic Projects to Inform Regulatory Permitting: Summary Findings from the 2015 Workshop on Marine and Hydrokinetic Technologies, Washington, D.C.

"Marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) technologies generate energy from predictable currents, tides, ocean thermal resources, and waves. With more than 50% of the American population living within 50 miles of the coast, a cost-effective MHK industry could provide a substantial amount of electricity for the nation. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Water Power Program is committed to developing and deploying innovative, water-based energy generation technologies." Researchers in MHK technologies met in 2014 and 2015 to examine the potentially negative effects of deploying the technologies. Because of the infancy of the technologies, few deployments have taken hold in the United States, and therefore most of the potential impacts are theoretical and not based on tests at deployment sights. Experts involved in the discussion labeled four main environmental impacts that developers should ; acoustic output impacts, electromagnetic field (EMF) emissions, physical interactions, environmental effects of MHK energy development on the physical environment. This article contains a full summary to the discussions that took place in the MHK workshops.