Harvest the Wind, Harvest Your Dinner: Using Law to Encourage an Offshore Energy-Food Multiple-Use Nexus

Abstract

Most scholars discuss the food-water-energy-climate nexus as it emerges on land. Less attention has been paid to the food-water-energy-climate nexus as it exists in the ocean, but that nexus exists—and it is beginning to be strained. This Article, a companion piece to the forthcoming “It’s Not Just an Offshore Wind Farm,” explores the international drive to combine offshore wind facilities with marine aquaculture, an emerging example of the water-energy-food nexus in the marine environment. Many nations are becoming increasingly interested in both offshore wind farms and open ocean marine aquaculture, but both enterprises take up considerable space in the marine environment. The resulting actual and potential crowding creates and threatens conflicts both with other uses, such as fishing, ecotourism, and shipping, and with marine protection and biodiversity goals. In Europe, where offshore wind facilities have become quite extensive, co-location of facilities has emerged as a strategy to reduce competition for offshore space that might simultaneously benefit marine aquaculture and enhance food security. This article examines the increasing drive toward co-locating offshore wind and open ocean aquaculture facilities and offers suggestions for how law might better promote this form of co-location through ongoing marine spatial planning efforts.