Abstract
Coastal communities and stakeholders affected by or involved in offshore wind and grid projects are key enablers of infrastructure development that benefits both people and nature. As offshore wind and grids expand in increasingly crowded and ecologically sensitive seas, meaningful engagement is becoming essential to improve planning quality, reduce conflicts, and support timely and nature-friendly delivery of this infrastructure.
This report is particularly timely in light of the European Ocean Act process, which is expected to update the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD) and strengthen cross-sectoral coordination in marine planning.
Gathering the expertise of Members and collaborators of OCEaN — North and Baltic Seas, this report presents an overview of stakeholder engagement approaches, policy and legal frameworks, and considerations for offshore wind and grid development at both Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) and project levels.
A key limitation in existing literature is that stakeholder engagement in offshore wind and grid development is often analysed either at the level of MSP or at the level of individual projects, but rarely in terms of how these two levels interact. As a result, the complementarity between strategic engagement in MSP and more concrete, project-level engagement is not sufficiently explored.
This report addresses this by looking at stakeholder engagement across planning levels: how early engagement at MSP level can help identify sensitivities, conflicts, knowledge gaps, and coexistence opportunities, and how project-level engagement can then refine solutions, address site-specific concerns and support implementation
The report finds that effective engagement is most valuable when it starts early, is transparent about what can be influenced, connects strategic and project-level discussions, and creates feedback loops showing how stakeholder input has been considered.
Desk research and targeted interviews carried out in 2025 and 2026 were used to summarise policies, opportunities, and challenges behind engagement approaches, and to explore how more holistic processes can deliver benefits for project developers, communities, and nature. While this report confirms the relevance of connecting engagement across planning levels, it also highlights that further evidence should be collected on how such connections work in practice.
The report also presents a selection of inspiring practices from northern European countries, civil society, and wind and grid industry actors, alongside ten principles to support public authorities, project developers, grid operators and stakeholders in designing engagement processes that are timely, inclusive, transparent, and connected across planning levels.