The North Sea Energy programm recently published a white paper "Towards a Synergistic Multi-Use in the North Sea" that explores the concept of offshore multi-use of space in the North Sea, focusing on how various human activities and MPAs can coexist synergistically.
North Sea Energy is a public-private research programme, which benefits from the cooperation of almost 40 international parties from the energy value chain. These parties are active in and around the North Sea. The programme was launched in 2017 and investigates the North Sea’s potential for an integrated energy system.
The whitepaper provides an interesting analysis and insights into the topic of multi-use.
Building on the insights from other projects (MERMAID, EU-SCORES, ROAD2SID, eMSP NBSR) this whitepaper discusses the following questions:
• What is the current state of multi-use in the North Sea?
• How synergistic are the current multi-uses in the North Sea?
• What would happen if the North Sea’s current multi-use patterns are projected into the future?
• What are some examples of synergistic multi-uses in the North Sea and what can we learn from them? How can synergistic multi-use become a norm in the North Sea?
The following forms of multi-use have been examined in the North Sea:
• wind farms and obstacle free zones
• wind farms and shipping lanes
• wind farms, MPAs and fishing
• MPAs and offshore grids.
These forms of multi-use have been chosen based on observed popular spatial overlap of human activities and MPAs. Some forms of multi-use were also examined due to the significance of their spatial overlaps in ongoing political discussions on MSP4. The purpose of this examination was to check if those overlaps indeed caused any spatial conflicts of interest or harmed the activities.