NINA secured funding from the Research Council of Norway for a collaborative project to address societal challenges relating to blue growth. The project called MARCIS (2021-2025) has a strong involvement of stakeholders from relevant sectors including the Environmental Agency, the Coastal Administration, Directorate of Fisheries, Birdlife as well as oil and gas companies and offshore wind industry.
Blue Growth is the long term strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors as a whole.
This will allow setting marine activities in a nature-inclusive planning context by developing a spatially explicit decision-support tool. For the energy sector, Equinor, Total, Aker Offshore Wind, RWE Renewables and the Norwegian Offshore Wind Cluster will contribute to specifically address the cumulative impacts of both oil & gas and offshore wind development on seabirds. Hywind Tampen will provide the backdrop to in-depth assessment of behavioural effects of floating turbines on seabirds and migrating birds frequenting the area. MARCIS will complement research to be executed as part of the Centre for Environment-friendly Energy research Northwind.
