© Smartland Landscape Architecture
North Sea Farm 1, created by the North Sea Farmers group with funding from Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund, is a pioneering project to integrate seaweed cultivation with wind farming. By locating the farm in previously empty space between turbines, the project is able to expand seaweed cultivation in the otherwise heavily used North Sea.
North Sea Farmers have this week announced that their highly anticipated project will be located within the Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm, about 18 km off the coast of Scheveningen, the Netherlands.
The project, executed by a consortium of scientific researchers and partners from the seaweed industry, is expected to open by late 2024 and, when complete, the farm will span 5-hectares, producing at least 6,000 kg of fresh seaweed in the first year. Following this, if the project succeeds, it is estimated that there is enough space within the current and future planned North Sea wind farms to cultivate 1 million tonnes of seaweed annually by 2040.
“We are particularly pleased to receive the world’s first permit for a seaweed farm within a wind farm. Hollandse Kust Zuid is one of the newest wind farms in the North Sea and at the same time relatively close to the coast, about two hours sailing,” said Eef Brouwers, North Sea Farmers general manager, in a press release.
“We hope that, with this project, people will become further convinced of the scaling opportunities of seaweed in the North Sea, but also of other forms of co-use such as solar, wave energy, and nature restoration,” he added.
