Offshore Energy and Marine Spatial Planning

Katherine L. Yates, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Katherine L. Yates, Corey J. A. Bradshaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317356417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecosystems & Habitats
• Index: Biological Sciences

The generation of offshore energy is a rapidly growing sector, competing for space in an already busy seascape. This book brings together the ecological, economic, and social implications of the spatial conflict this growth entails. Covering all energy-generation types (wind, wave, tidal, oil, and gas), it explores the direct and indirect impacts the growth of offshore energy generation has on both the marine environment and the existing uses of marine space.

Chapters explore main issues associated with offshore energy, such as the displacement of existing activities and the negative impacts it can have on marine species and ecosystems. Chapters also discuss how the growth of offshore energy generation presents new opportunities for collaboration and co-location with other sectors, for example, the co-location of wild-capture fisheries and wind farms.

The book integrates these issues and opportunities, and demonstrates the importance of holistic marine spatial planning for optimising the location of offshore energy-generation sites. It highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement in these planning processes and the role of integrated governance, with illustrative case studies from the United States, United Kingdom, northern Europe, and the Mediterranean. It also discusses trade-off analysis and decision theory and provides a range of tools and best practices to inform future planning processes.

Chapter 1
Marine spatial planning

An idea whose time has come

Charles N. Ehler

Introduction

Before the last century, ocean space was used mainly for two purposes: marine transport and fishing. Conflicts between these uses were infrequent, except around a few ports, with little need for integrated, comprehensive marine spatial planning (Smith 2001). But today, the human uses of ocean space are growing more intense and varied, yet fisheries are still mostly managed separately from oil and gas development, which in turn is managed separately from marine navigation and offshore renewable energy, and so on, despite real conflicts between and among these multiple uses.

This single-sector planning and management approach (one sector at a time) often fails to resolve conflicts among users of marine space, rarely dealing explicitly with trade-offs among uses (Chapter 2), and even more rarely dealing with conflicts between the cumulative effects of multiple uses on the marine environment (Chapter 8). New uses of marine space, such as ocean energy extraction (e.g., fossil fuels) and generation (e.g., wind), increase the pressure on limited marine space and the potential conflict between different uses. Single-sector management has also tended to reduce and dissipate the effect of enforcement at sea because of the scope and geographic coverage involved and the environmental conditions in which monitoring and enforcement have to operate. Relative to terrestrial environments, little ‘public policing’ of human activities takes place at sea.

As a consequence of this lack of coordination, integration, and enforcement, in addition to many other stressors such as pollution, invasive species, climate change, ocean acidification, and illegal fishing, marine ecosystems around the world are increasingly imperilled (Halpern et al. 2015). But awareness is growing that the ongoing degradation in marine ecosystems is, in large part, a failure issue of ineffective governance (Crowder et al. 2006, Chapter 4). Many scientists and policy analysts have advocated reforms centred on the idea of ‘ecosystem-based management’ (Arkema et al. 2006). However, to date, a practical method for translating this concept into operational management practice has not emerged. One step toward ecosystem-based management is the increasing worldwide interest in ‘marine spatial planning’. Marine spatial planning is a process now employed in more than 60 countries around the world to identify and resolve conflicts among competing uses of ocean space, and to resolve conflicts between human uses and the natural marine environment (UNESCO-IOC 2017).

Marine spatial planning

Societal demand for marine goods and services, such as food, energy, and habitats, is rising and often exceeds the capacity of marine areas to meet all demands simultaneously. In many cases, users have free access to marine resources (including ocean space), which often leads to over-use, conflicts, and eventual degradation of some marine resources. Since many marine goods and services are not priced in the market—e.g., ecosystem services such as climate regulation and storm protection—conflicts often cannot be resolved by trade-offs made through economic analysis alone (Chapter 2). A public process must be used to decide what mix of outputs or goods and services from the marine area should be produced over time and space. That process is marine spatial planning.

Marine spatial planning (otherwise known as ‘maritime spatial planning’, or simply ‘marine planning’) is a practical way to create and organise the uses of marine space and the interactions among them. The process ideally balances the demands for development with ecosystem conservation to achieve social and economic objectives for marine regions in an open and planned way. Marine spatial planning is therefore a public process of analysing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social goals and objectives that are usually specified through a political process (Ehler and Douvere 2007). More recently, marine spatial planning has been characterized as “ecosystem-based management at sea” (Katona et al. 2017).

The main characteristics of effective marine spatial planning processes include the following:

1. Integrated: across and among sectors and governmental agencies, and among different levels of government;
2. Strategic and future-oriented: focused on the long term;
3. Participatory: engaging stakeholders actively throughout the entire process;
4. Adaptive: capable of learning by doing;
5. Ecosystem-based: balancing ecological, economic, social, and cultural goals and objectives toward sustainable development and the maintenance of ecosystem services; and
6. Place- or area-based: focused on marine spaces that people can understand, relate to, and care about (Ehler and Douvere 2007).

Planning and managing human activities in marine areas is clear and achievable (as we do on land), whereas managing or restoring marine ecosystem functions and processes in the same area is far more difficult, and often impossible. The focus of marine spatial planning is thus on the management of human activities and not on the management of marine ecosystems.

Why marine spatial planning is needed

Most countries already designate or zone marine space for many different human activities, such as maritime transportation, oil and gas development, offshore energy, offshore aquaculture, and waste disposal. However, the problem is that usually this is done sector by sector, or case by case, without much consideration of the effects on either other human activities or the marine environment (Ehler and Douvere 2007). Consequently, this situation has led to two major types of conflicts: (1) conflicts among human uses (user-user conflicts) and (2) conflicts between human uses and the natural environment (user-nature conflicts) (Ehler and Douvere 2007). Resolving these conflicts involves trade-offs among uses and trade-offs between economic development and nature conservation (Chapter 3).

These conflicts can compromise the marine ecosystem services upon which humans and all other life on Earth depend (Chapter 8). Furthermore, without an overarching vision for the marine space that encompasses all users, decision makers usually end up only being able to react to conflict events, often when it is already too late to avoid problems. In contrast, marine spatial planning is a future-oriented process that provides the opportunity to plan and shape actions that could lead to a more desirable future for the marine environment. Marine spatial planning offers a way to address both types of conflicts (user-user, user-nature) and select appropriate management actions to maintain and safeguard necessary ecosystem services. Marine spatial planning involves considering how different activities can impact users and ecosystems (Chapters 7 and 8), the impact of displacement of activities (Chapter 6), and the extent to which activities are incompatible or can coexist/co-locate (Chapters 10 and 11).

When effectively put into practice, marine spatial planning includes the following steps and outcomes:

1. Set priorities to increase the probability of meeting the development and conservation objectives of marine areas sustainably and equitably; it is necessary to provide a rational basis for setting priorities, and to manage and direct resources to where and when they are most needed;
2. Create and stimulate opportunities for new users of marine areas, including ocean energy;
3. Co-ordinate actions and investments in space and time to ensure positive returns from those investments, both public and private, and to facilitate complementarity among jurisdictions and institutions;
4. Provide a spatial vision and consistent direction, not only of what is desirable, but also of what is possible in marine areas;
5. Protect nature, which has its own requirements that should be respected if long-term, sustainable development is to be achieved and if large-scale environmental degradation is to be avoided or minimized;
6. Reduce fragmentation of marine habitats, i.e., when ecosystems are isolated into increasingly smaller fragments due to human activities and prevented from functioning properly;
7. Avoid duplication of effort by different public agencies and levels of government in marine spatial planning-related activities, including planning, monitoring, and permitting;
8. Achieve a higher quality of service at all levels of government by ensuring that permitting of human activities is streamlined when proposed development is consistent with a comprehensive spatial plan for the marine area (Ehler and Douvere 2007).

Space and time are important in marine spatial planning

Some areas of the ocean are more important than others from both ecological and socio-economic perspectives (Crowder and Norse 2008). Species, habitats, populations of animals, oil and gas deposits, sand and gravel deposits, and sustained winds or waves are all distributed unequally in space and over time. Successful marine management needs planners and managers that understand how to work with the spatial and temporal diversity of marine resources. Understanding these spatial and temporal distributions and mapping them are therefore essential components of effective marine spatial planning. Important outcomes of marine spatial planning are enhancing compatible uses and reducing conflicts among uses, as well as reducing conflicts between human activities and nature. Examining how these distributions might change due to climate change and other long-term pressures (e.g., overfishing and/or habitat loss) on marine systems is another important challenge for marine spatial planning (Molinos et al. 2016).

Offshore energy as a principal ‘driver’ of marine spatial planning

Pressures from human activities have often led to initiatives to improve the management of marine areas. For example, in the 1970s, the threat of offshore oil and gas development and phosphate mining led to protection of the Great Barrier Reef (Lawrence et al. 2002). More recently, marine spatial planning has been driven by national policies to develop offshore wind energy. These policies are a result of many countries having ambitious renewable energy-generation targets associated with international climate change-mitigation agreements.

In Western Europe, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany have all developed and implemented marine plans that incorporated substantial consideration of offshore wind energy. In the United Kingdom, Scotland produced its marine spatial plan, and England is working on 11 regional marine spatial plans, two of which have been approved and the rest are to be completed by 2020, and all of which consider offshore energy potential (United Kingdom 2017). The recent directive on maritime spatial planning now instructs all 23 Member States of the European Union that have marine waters to prepare a legally binding maritime spatial plan by 2021, regardless of the presence of offshore energy potential as a driver (European Parliament 2014).

Offshore wind energy has also been a driver for marine spatial planning in the U.S. states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, both of which have completed plans for their state waters that identify ‘appropriate’ areas for wind energy development (Commonwealth of Massachusetts 2009; State of Rhode Island 2010). Again this focus is driven by commitments to generate energy from renewable sources. The State of Rhode Island, for example, is committed to meet 15 percent of its energy needs from renewable energy resources, primarily from offshore wind farms. More recently, regional marine spatial plans, driven by plans to lease large areas of the exclusive economic zone in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the USA for offshore wind development, have been completed and approved by the national government (Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Body 2016; Northeast Regional Planning Body 2016).

While interests in the development of an ocean energy sector (e.g., wave, tidal) are high, large-scale commercial development and economic viability are still only intentions. As such, ocean energy (other than wind) remains in the research and development stage today, and it has not yet been a principal driver of marine spatial planning in any country. Nevertheless, it is a growing consideration. The state of Oregon, for example, completed and approved a plan for its marine waters that considered the potential of ocean energy (State of Oregon 2013). Oregon has an ideal combination of high-energy waves and available infrastructure that has led many companies to stake a claim to the State’s potentially lucrative waters. Oregon’s Ocean Policy Advisory Committee has gathered data to identify possible wave energy sites, including important fishing areas, important wildlife areas, and other competing uses. The resulting plan amendment identifies four “Renewable Energy Suitability Study Areas” along the Oregon coast where initial development of wave energy will be encouraged and pose the least conflict with existing ocean uses and natural resources. In 2015, Scotland approved its national marine spatial plan and produced a consultation draft for marine renewable energy for Pentland Fi...