North C Neutral

Background

Sustainable sea basin use is crucial for energy, food security, and the economy. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP), especially in the North Sea, has progressed, providing a foundation for innovation. Developing offshore solutions is key to addressing climate change, renewable energy, food systems, sustainable transport and biodiversity.

Historically, North Sea countries have taken a sector-specific approach, effective for individual projects but missing potential synergies. With offshore wind advancements and mature spatial planning, it’s now vital to adopt a more integrated approach.

North C Neutral

The methodology is centered on the interaction between a data-driven optimization model (the North C Neutralizer), marine spatial design and a robust co-creation approach.

North C Neutralizer

The North C Neutralizer is an innovative optimization model for sea basin planning, that generates the optimal balance among the marine’s various sectors. And this for each stakeholder scenario.

Through visualizations and quantitative analyses, the North C Neutralizer clarifies impacts at all levels: from the Greater North Sea Basin to national level, from energy hubs to even onshore scales, including impacts on harbours and energy cable landing points.

To thrive within a multi-stakeholder environment, the North C Neutralizer is designed as an open model. It grows through collective intelligence, and thus produces increasingly robust solutions.

Example Scenarios generated using the North C Neutralizer. These outputs are purely illustrative, showcasing the potential capabilities of the model.

Spatial design

To materialize the outputs of the North C Neutralizer and foster joint fact-finding, ORG further develops these outputs through spatial design. Our team of designers and experts listen, integrate, and innovate in collaboration with stakeholders, all while adhering to shared ambitions and boundary conditions. This transparent, co-creative process engages stakeholders at various scales—basin, national, and project—. This approach ensures adaptive, resilient outcomes aligned with shared goals. Tangible designs make impacts clear, encouraging active participation and collaboration, while highlighting opportunities and challenges to address strategic decisions with clarity and inclusivity.

Co-creation

Building on our expertise with large-scale strategic processes, we developed a 1.5-year co-creative approach, centering stakeholders. Through interdisciplinary work benches, we collaborate with stakeholders and experts to rigorously test and refine strategies using the North C Neutralizer and spatial design tools. This process ensures a focused selection of feasible, widely supported strategies for policymakers.

North C Neutral offers a practical and effective approach to enhancing collaboration and maximizing synergies across the Greater North Sea region. This proposed process can support existing initiatives like the Greater North Sea Basin Initiative and North Seas Energy Cooperation, contributing by providing realistic scenarios for the future from a hands-on perspective. And the model can be applied to other sea basins as well.

The North C Neutralizer model is developed in collaboration with Ortelius and Mantis Consulting with support of Vlaio and The Blue Cluster.