The Crown Estate, which manages the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said Tuesday it has started work to digitally map the seabed to address the increasing demands on its finite resources, including from industries such as offshore wind, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and other renewables.
Partnering with various organisations, the Crown Estate is developing an integrated, spatial analysis platform which is expected to be completed in 2025.
Gus Jaspert, managing director, Marine, at the Crown Estate, explained that a coordinated approach is needed to maximise the potential of the seabed to support vital industries, net zero and nature recovery.
The platform will be used to model how future demands could be met under various scenarios; build a visual understanding of how various demands could be accommodated and integrated in a coordinated way; drive the design of the Crown Estate’s longer-term seabed leasing processes; help ensure the seabed is proactively managed to enable the delivery of current and future policies while protecting nature, biodiversity and national targets; and help inform interactions between offshore and onshore infrastructure planning.
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