Our approach

We are the managers of the seabed and much of the coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland and our vision is to create the most sustainable and attractive marine economy and environment in the world. We have a responsibility to deliver value for the nation and nature – through enabling green energy, driving economic growth and jobs, and creating and protecting thriving biodiversity and marine environments.  

Through sectors such as offshore wind and creating opportunities for new technologies such as carbon capture and storage and green hydrogen, we play a vital role in unlocking renewable energy for millions of homes, supporting the nation’s transition to a resilient, sustainable and decarbonised future. 

As well as being critical to the UK’s energy transition, our seabed and seas support many other industries imperative to livelihoods as well as important natural habitats and wildlife. All these activities create ever increasing demands on the seabed and competition for space. We need to take a holistic view on how we manage the seabed to ensure the right activities are brought forward in the right locations in the right way. 

Using our unique position and ability to take a long-term view, we are working in partnership with industry and stakeholders to bring together the best minds, data and technologies to do just that. We have created a Whole of Seabed Programme to catalyse the delivery of multiple priorities including net zero and nature recovery, as well as the enhanced co-ordination of future activities out to 2050. By doing this, we can help de-risk and accelerate the ambitions of industry in a way that supports diverse marine environments and other users of the sea.

About the Whole of Seabed Programme

We are building a holistic evidence base and understanding of the seabed resources needed to meet the future demands of our sea and the barriers to meeting them.   

The Whole of Seabed Programme delivers the capability to identify potential sectoral interactions over the coming decades in greater detail than ever before. This will be used to model how future demands for seabed rights and overarching objectives, such as achieving net zero by 2050 and recovering the marine environment, could be met under various scenarios.  

This approach will enable us, along with our partners across marine management, planning and delivery, to:    

Our Programme in action  

The Whole of Seabed Programme has been made possible by our expertise in geospatial analysis, supported by robust data and evidence developed and collated over the last 20 years and through our suite of bespoke modelling tools.  

These tools and capabilities have allowed us to create a uniquely sophisticated method to spatially represent future resources and demands across a vast range of activities, such as habitat restoration, offshore telecoms cables, offshore wind and more.

As we develop the Programme further, we are expanding our work with stakeholders to build and validate the underlying data and evidence used in the analysis, as well as identify knowledge gaps that can be filled to improve our understanding going forwards.   

In parallel we are using the Whole of Seabed evidence base to help coordinate actions amongst delivery bodies for net zero and nature recovery, bridging policy to delivery. This includes co-developing a Marine Delivery Routemap with our partners, including government bodies and delivery agencies, which will inform future leasing, licensing, sector plans and identify where enabling investments may be needed.