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EMODnet is part of the agenda of the North Sea Countries energy cooperation plan

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Last June, North Sea countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) agreed to further strengthen their energy cooperation by signing a joint political declaration and action plan.  The scope of the plan is the eventual development of offshore wind energy which will ensure a sustainable, secure and affordable energy supply to the region.

For the first three years (2016-2019), the energy cooperation between the countries will focus on three main areas:

  • Coordinating the planning and development of offshore wind and grid projects beyond national borders including area mapping;
  • Developing a common environmental assessment framework;
  • Increasing the availability and interoperability of marine data for planning, impact assessment, licensing and operations.

EMODnet will be used to contribute to the third of these priorities. First of all work will be carried out to assess whether common EMODnet based standards could be adopted and extended across sectors and borders to facilitate sharing of compatible data. Secondly, new data and/or products will be collected and made available through the EMDOnet data ingestion portal. Thirdly, EMODnet standards will be aligned to the needs of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) exploring the feasibility of a European MSP-Data-Portal/connectivity with EMODnet.

 

Click here to read the full work programme of the Implementation of the Political Declaration on energy cooperation between the North Sea Countries.

More on the political declaration here.