Multi-Use Offshore Platforms for Renewable Energy and Aquaculture

Driven by the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and secure sustainable food sources, multi-use offshore platforms integrate renewable energy installations with aquaculture operations on shared marine infrastructure. By co-locating wind turbines, tidal devices or wave energy converters with systems for cultivating seaweed, shellfish and finfish, these platforms aim to optimise use of ocean space, share capital and maintenance costs, and generate complementary ecosystem services such as nutrient recycling and carbon capture. Practical demonstrations have shown that coupling offshore wind arrays with seaweed and shellfish farming can yield substantial biomass and mitigate eutrophication while providing power to on-platform processing facilities. At the same time, structural and mooring designs must accommodate both dynamic energy loads and the biological requirements of cultured species, and governance frameworks need to reconcile diverse regulatory, environmental and stakeholder interests. Globally significant for achieving sustainable development goals, multi-use systems promise greater economic resilience and environmental benefits than single-use schemes, but they demand advances in engineering, ecology, policy and participatory planning to move from pilot projects to commercial deployment.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of integrating low-trophic aquaculture within offshore wind farms to deliver multiple sustainability benefits. Modelling in a transition zone between the North Sea and Baltic Sea suggests that allocating a modest proportion of wind farm footprints to sugar kelp and blue mussel cultivation can produce upwards of 18 tonnes of biomass per hectare annually, while capturing and storing carbon equivalent to a significant share of regional agricultural emissions. Projections indicate that global aquaculture output could more than double under widespread adoption, with added advantages for nutrient removal and habitat enhancement. Despite these promising outcomes, the research highlights the need to resolve technical interface issues, adapt mooring and platform designs for mixed-use loading, and develop regulatory mechanisms to govern co-location and resource sharing.

Multi-Use Offshore Platforms for Renewable Energy and Aquaculture publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in multi-use offshore platforms for renewable energy and aquaculture across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Multi-use platform: An offshore structure or designated marine area designed to support co-located activities such as energy generation and aquaculture.

Low-trophic aquaculture: Cultivation of species at the base of the food web (e.g. seaweed, shellfish) requiring minimal external feed inputs.

Cognitive mapping: A participatory method that visualises stakeholders’ perceptions of causal relationships among social, economic and environmental factors.

References

1. Multi-use of offshore wind farms with low-trophic aquaculture can help achieve global sustainability goals. Communications Earth & Environment (2023).
2. Managing offshore multi-use settings: Use of conceptual mapping to reduce uncertainty of co-locating seaweed aquaculture and wind farms. Journal of Environmental Management (2024).
3. Two decades of research on ocean multi-use: achievements, challenges and the need for transdisciplinarity. npj Ocean Sustainability (2024).