The Blue Growth Farm

Multi-use Offshore Installations (MOI) combine two or more production technologies on the same platform at open sea, within 12 nautical miles. Despite their potential, there are several challenges to overcome before commercial viability: social, technical and engineering, environmental, and economic. The activity included a special focus on the socio-technical aspect, investigating community perceptions of an MOI design and testing activity over three years, with the aim of further understanding of the social acceptability of such a technology combination and the factors that might lead to social license to operate. The research activity was conducted in Reggio Calabria, Italy, where a scaled prototype MOI was deployed in 2021, and Islay, Scotland where the biophysical environment is suitable for a full-scale MOI, using community surveys and workshops.
Hence, the study was exploring mix of heuristic and semi-experiential (BGF prototype deployment in Reggio Calabria) perspectives of coastal communities over time.

Main findings showed that coastal communities prefer wind turbines to fish farming, that there is low trust in public officials to regulate the environmental impacts of an MOI, and that there is contextual variation in opinions. We reflected on the complexities of understanding societal opinions of an MOI, given an MOI consists of relatively well-known technologies combined to make a new and unknown technology. We highlighted areas for future work, including exploring the scale of deployment that is required to create crystallisation of community opinions of MOI, different combinations of technology and their acceptability, influence of opinions on an MOI on other single sector deployments (such as wind farms, wave/ tidal arrays, and fish farms), and the role of trust in regulators in social license to operate. We also provided recommendations for developers on the activities that they could undertake to improve the likelihood of developing social license to operate. 
The study concluded, in both case study communities and across time, that there was a positivity gap in perceptions between the concept of an MOI and its components in general, versus if one were deployed locally. Further, that the combination of known technologies in an MOI influenced people’s views on the products from the MOI. In this case, that people were more likely to eat fish produced in an MOI than from a fish farm alone. Association to a “positive” technology such as offshore wind, seemed to raise the acceptability of a “controversial” food production process, farming fish. 

Finally, more research is needed to understand the directional influence of perceptions of one type of technology over other(s). For example, whether association with fish farming reduces the acceptability of offshore wind technology. Improving understanding of these types of complex perception interactions may be beneficial to MOI developers and multi-use designers in considering which technologies to combine to increase the likelihood of garnering social license to operate.

The study included the deployment of a theoretical framework for understanding governance in relation to the deployment of MOI and the development of an associated industry.  The complete set of relevant EU Directives and their transpositions into the laws of certain Member States have been accurately analysed, taking into consideration their implications for MOI design and deployment. The activity also included interviews with selected representatives of government and industry, to providing a deeper understanding of MOI policy and regulation, and insight into how improvements could better facilitate MOI through more effective policy and more efficient licencing processes. 
On the negative side, the sectors of Marine Renewable Energy Generator (MREG) and fish-farming are very different in their operation and regulation and have yet few incentives, but many barriers, for co-operation in using the same sea-space, let alone the same platform. On the positive side, MOI such as that of BGF not only help ameliorate the competition for space at sea, but they can also help reduce the carbon emissions from fish-farming, which is becoming increasingly energy-intensive. There is evidently good-will amongst policy makers towards multi-use, and it is urged by EU, national and regional regulators to develop better legal platforms for multi-use within the context of MSP.