This study investigates the complex and still insufficiently understood interactions between ocean currents and offshore wind farms (OWFs), with a focus on local-scale hydrodynamic effects near individual wind turbine foundations. Despite growing interest in the environmental impacts of OWFs, empirical field data on local-scale current dynamics within wind farms remain sparse. This technical report describes the results from a field campaign, which was conducted within the Anholt OWF in the Kattegat over a 9-day period in August 2024.
The EU Green Deal calls for a rapid and efficient green transition. On-going climate change and an increasing need for secure and sustainable energy means ambitious projects and goals are accelerated. To expand and exchange offshore wind energy across North Sea neighbouring countries, the Danish government presented in 2020 the Danish North Sea Energy Island (NSEI) project. This pilot project illustrates the shift from ‘nationally individualistic’ modes of connecting offshore wind energy projects, to supplying a multi-lateral renewable offshore energy grid. The Energy Island project builds on the Hub-and-Spoke (H&S) approach, which introduces a new level of complexity to governing the next generation of offshore wind energy projects. This paper analyses the political motivations for the Danish project and the planning and implementation of the Energy Islands, integrating a combination of collaborative and transboundary governance perspectives. The qualitative analysis is based on a document analysis and a literature review. Findings show how planning for the Danish Energy Island has faced delays and challenges, causing uncertainties about the Island’s capability to support Green Deal goals, as well as a mismatch between political ambitions and practical implementation. The artificial offshore island is currently under reconsideration due to costs and is, as of March 2024, still in its planning phase. This case study on the Danish NSEI serves as an introduction to the general functionalities and development of the Island and defines a Danish Energy Island. Results indicate that the combination of transboundary and collaborative governance structures are necessary as part of a successful implementation of Energy Islands.
This paper discusses the governance of port classification through the lens of multi-level governance theory, with a particular focus on the Port of Aalborg and the issue of classification of Limfjord waters, in Denmark. The study identifies a conflict in which national governmental decisions regarding the classification of navigable waterways obstruct the port's access to funding opportunities. Despite the port's autonomous operational capacity, national control over waterway classification and port typology shows a nested governance dynamic, thereby highlighting the intricacies of the European Union's subsidiarity principle. This paper argues that the case illustrates how the classification of inland waterways, although ostensibly legal, is intrinsically political and subject to national interests. The Danish government's refusal to designate the Limfjord as a navigable waterway potentially hinders regional development and impedes the EU's policy objectives for intermodality. Methodologically, the research synthesizes desk-based analysis with key-informant interviews to examine the legal, political, and geographical dimensions of this issue. The findings contribute to multi-level governance theory by describing the case as a hybrid model that integrates both nested and polycentric elements, thereby enriching the debate on governance complexities within the European context.
With increasing demand for renewable energy resources, the development of alternative concepts is still ongoing. The wave energy sector is still in vast development on the way to contribute to the energy production world wide. The present study presents the development of the Exowave wave energy converter made so far. A numerical model has been established supported by wave flume tests performed at Aalborg University during the first phase of the development. Furthermore, a successful open sea demonstration has been performed on 7 meters of water at Blue Accelerator, Belgium, from which the concept has been proven. As part of the ongoing research, verification of the numerical model will be made through experimental testing in the wave tank of Aalborg University, and an open sea demonstration at 14 meters of water depth will be executed off the coast of Hanstholm, Denmark.
Collaborative spatial decision support tools can contribute with setups for including stakeholders into marine spatial planning (MSP) processes with the purpose of increasing trust in planning outcomes, facilitate knowledge co-creation and shared planning goals, and provide transparent, scientific, inclusive, and technical foundations for planning. A new collaborative spatial decision support setup based on the combination of functionalities from two spatial decision support tools called SEANERGY and Baltic Explorer was designed for and tested in a workshop in 2020 targeted local authorities, NGOs, and citizens in Denmark with an interest in MSP. While the setup needs further testing among a wider span of stakeholders to support a pluralistic approach, the findings illustrate promising potentials from ranking conflicts and synergies in collaborative settings to make marine activity interests spatially visible in MSP and gain an overview of opportunities for sea use multi-functionality in context-based, interactive, goal-oriented stakeholder processes. The use of a visual platform such as Baltic Explorer to systematically explore locations of marine uses was positively evaluated to facilitate the workshop conflict-synergy discussions. Challenges relate to how to deal with disagreements on conflict-synergy scores and the subjectivity of opinions, but the demonstrated flexible, quick, transparent way to test the sensitivity of spatial patterns to differences in input conflict-synergy scores is found to provide a promising setup for including stakeholder opinions through collaborative settings, a setup adjustable to supplementary large-scale, individual, more representative surveys as well.
The following report presents the results of the experimental testing of the Exowave wave energy converter (WEC) performed in September 2023 at the Ocean and Coastal Engineering Laboratory at Aalborg University, Denmark. The model tests are performed based on the current design of the WEC35 Exowave floater as part of the project 250 MW bølgekraft I den danske Nordsø før 2030 – fase 1 supported by the Danish Energy Agency under the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) contract number 64022-1062.
The aim of this article is to illustrate the most important changes in the regulatory framework of the shipping sector from the 1960s to 2010, and to analyse the basis for, and effects of, these changes. In order to explain how the transformation has occurred, we use two traditional maritime nations—Denmark and Norway—as case studies. First, we introduce the two regimes of Danish and Norwegian shipping: ‘the national regime’ from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s; and ‘the competitive regime’, which was fully established by the middle of the 1990s and still persists. Then, we briefly sketch the bargaining that accompanied the shift from the national regime to the competitive regime. Specifically, we show that the new regime primarily accommodated the interests of private actors such as shipping companies, rather than the interests of the authorities and the trade unions.
For the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, solving the discard problem is a central issue. Through a study of the institutional set-up and initiatives to solve the discard problem in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway, the article identifies the discard problem as related to natural and other material conditions as well as cultural conditions. Therefore, solving the discard problem requires not only technical and regulatory instruments, but also arenas and structures that allow and support cultural change processes.