Maritime spatial planning and offshore wind energy

The offshore wind sector is growing rapidly globally, moving further offshore and occupying large areas of maritime space, which is already used by many other sectors. This can lead to conflicts between uses and creates the need for better integrated planning and management of all activities. Maritime or Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) seeks to deliver sustainable development through optimising the location of development sites and balancing interests whilst protecting the environment. This chapter explains the conceptual basis for MSP. How it interacts with requirements deriving from international law, including for example, jurisdictional aspects, navigational safety and exclusion zones are presented. Given the success of Europe in deploying offshore wind farms the EU’s approach to MSP is described and analysed using three countries to demonstrate how MSP works therein, interacts with licensing systems and deals with co-existence. The chapter concludes with possible aspects of MSP that need to be strengthened.