Planning the North Sea
presented as Europe's ‘powerhouse’ given its central role in the offshore energy transition. Yet, scaling up offshore wind from today’s 4.7 gigawatts to over 70 gigawatts in the Dutch North Sea by 2050 faces major spatial, environmental and technological challenges.
This research examines to what extent Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) processes can adopt strategic approaches to address these challenges. Insights from MSP processes in the Netherlands, England, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and the Greater North Sea Basin Initiative reveal only limited uptake of strategic MSP. Planning is dominated by short-term goals, especially the rapid expansion of offshore wind farms towards 2030.
While environmental considerations are included through Strategic Environmental Assessments, they are often overshadowed by sectoral policies and political pressures. Fragmented governmental responsibilities further constrain institutional capacities for spatial conflict resolution. At the international level, national sovereignty concerns and unclear governance structures mean that keep collaboration largely informal.
These dynamics underscore the need for institutional innovations to strengthen strategic MSP. Such innovations must push MSP for offshore energy transition and energy system integration beyond a short-term exercise in allocating sea space for wind farms. Instead, they should address their deeply political nature, shaped by power relations, institutional capacities, and competing (sectoral) priorities to allow system integration, spatial multi-use and international cooperation to become possible.
Adopting strategic MSP in the North Sea requires courage and innovation: courage from policymakers to look beyond immediate, national targets, and innovation in institutional arrangements to enable cross-sectoral, cross-border, and long-term coordination.