When Offshore Wind Meets Offshore Aquaculture – Is the Governance Framework Fit for Multi-Use?

Norway has major ambitions for sustainable growth at sea, but when several marine industries establish themselves in the same area, it is not always clear how coexistence can best be facilitated in practice. In the scoping study “When Offshore Wind Meets Aquaculture – Is the Governance Framework Fit for Multi-Use? ”, the Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic explores how complex and sector-based management processes affect the realization of multi-use projects at sea.  

The report was prepared on behalf of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries to support the government’s goal of identifying and removing potential barriers that hinder multi-use at sea. Through cases and close dialogue with actors from industry, management and academia, the study maps the processes that industry actors must go through to obtain necessary permits, and where barriers arise. It also provides recommendations both for actors who wish to develop multi-use projects and for authorities who will continue working to facilitate multi-use at sea.  

For the Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic, the aim of the work has been to make the complex and sector-divided management structure more understandable, and to help identify where challenges arise in the realization of multi-use projects at sea.  

The scoping study shows that there are no specific obstacles in the form of prohibitions against multi-use projects in laws and regulations, but rather that regulatory and management barriers create uncertainty about whether multi-use solutions are permitted or feasible. Today’s management lacks structures that enable effective collaboration across sectors, and therefore multi-use projects depend on better tools to handle the complexity they involve.