The Crown Estate has begun digitally mapping the seabed resource needed to meet future demand to enable delivery of multiple and potentially competing priorities, including offshore expansion and nature recovery.
The work is a response to growing demands on the finite resources of the seabed.
Work is expected to complete in 2025, and the live platform will be continuously updated to reflect any new information and evidence.
As work progresses, emerging findings will be widely shared with stakeholders so that early learnings can be captured and refinements and improvements can be made.
In the coming weeks, The Crown Estate will look to convene governments, marine planning bodies from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and sector decision-making organisations to discuss how the outputs of this programme, and insights from across the sector can be used to develop a long-term mechanism for coordinated action over the seabed, and how it can continue to play a critical role in delivering net zero and marine nature recovery.
The seabed supports livelihoods, natural habitats and industries and, with recent advances in new industries such as offshore wind, carbon capture and storage and other renewable technologies, it is becoming an increasingly crowded space.
The platform will deliver the capability to identify key sectoral interactions over the coming decades in greater detail than ever before.
It will be used to model how future demands could be met under various scenarios, build a visual understanding of the ways in which a wide range of demands could be accommodated and integrated in a co-ordinated way, drive the design of The Crown Estate’s longer-term seabed leasing processes, and identify where knowledge gaps exist which, if addressed, could improve the sophistication of future planning.
The work will be informed by The Crown Estate’s geospatial mapping capabilities and deep cross-sectoral insights into existing and current demands on the seabed.
It will also complement and inform existing work in this space, including the cross-Government Marine Spatial Prioritisation work led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in collaboration with the Marine Management Organisation, which addresses the management of all activities in English waters.
Managing director, marine, at The Crown Estate Gus Jaspert (pictured) said: “The seabed is facing a moment of transition with more demands on it than ever before, supporting natural habitats, vital industries including renewable energy, and playing an important role in energy security.
“As these demands intensify, a new, co-ordinated approach is needed to ensure we make the most of this vital resource for our country and for nature.
“We’re stepping up to help meet this challenge; combining our spatial mapping expertise, our cross-sector overview of seabed demands, and new digital capabilities and inputs from our partners to deliver the most sophisticated digital scenario-mapping exercise in our history.
“The results will act as a guiding light to inform a joint plan for how we, with our partners, can orchestrate the jigsaw of competing seabed demands and unlock the seabed’s potential to support vital industries, net zero and nature recovery for the long-term.”