Abstract
The Netherlands aims to deploy up to 70 GW of offshore wind by 2050 in its waters. As one of the busiest sea areas in the world, the Dutch part of the North Sea is shaped by spatial tensions and a degraded state of nature due to activities such as fossil fuel extraction, shipping and fishing. The interconnectedness of sectors and actors leads to various interactions with spatially demanding offshore wind, potentially enabling and constraining its deployment. We use systems thinking to explore the interactions which occur in the Dutch North Sea as a result of the offshore wind transition. We interview 22 stakeholders, organise one structured focus group discussion, and four follow-up workshops. Through our systems thinking approach, we elucidate on the interactions between different sectors and activities in the domains of the socio-technical system of offshore wind, spatial competition, and quality of nature, thereby broadening the scope of analysis. This allows us to identify a set of interactions which impact the deployment of offshore wind in the Netherlands, located in the domains infrastructure, society, space, and ecology. Overall, we find that the spatial and ecological interactions point to the need to build on synergies between different activities for a successful transition. As the expansion of offshore wind will lead to a variety of effects due to the interactions with other domains, there will likely be conflicts with other policy areas such as ecology and marine spatial planning.