About

Towards an Integrated North Sea Energy System

Developing new concepts to unlock offshore low-carbon energy potential with optimal value for society and nature

Approach

A Collaborative and Integrated Approach

The North Sea Energy (NSE) program unites nearly 40 public and private organizations, along with international partners from across the energy value chain, to pioneer innovative concepts for offshore system integration in the North Sea. Established in 2017 as a pre-competitive innovation program under the TKI New Gas initiative, NSE is driving Europe’s affordable and sustainable energy transition while creating optimal value for society and nature.

At the core of NSE’s mission is its focus on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and brokerage. By fostering a participatory process, the program ensures that stakeholders contribute to and benefit from the development of integrated energy solutions. Besides research, we also initiate pilots and projects to test and demonstrate innovative concepts in practice, such as the PosHYdon project.

North Sea Energy Hubs: Driving Offshore Integration. The conceptual design and development of North Sea Energy Hubs is at the heart of our program. These hubs provide a critical foundation for informed decision-making by industry leaders and policymakers. By focusing on offshore system integration, the hubs enable pilots, demonstrations, and early commercial projects that drive the short-term realization of offshore energy solutions. To support this vision, NSE gathers and develops science-based knowledge and incorporates stakeholder perspectives to guide the development of three offshore hubs currently envisaged for the North Sea. These hubs are designed to:

  1. Accelerate the deployment of offshore wind energy.
  2. Facilitate carbon capture, transport, and storage (CCS).

Earlier research and results from the NSE program have shown that these initiatives not only help meet climate targets but also contribute to the creation of a sustainable energy system at a lower cost for society and nature. By advancing the concept of integrated energy hubs, the NSE program is setting the stage for a resilient and efficient offshore energy network that supports Europe's energy transition goals.

Vision

An Integrated North Sea Energy System

Unlocking the North Sea energy potential. The North Sea offers unparalleled potential for implementing a future climate-neutral energy system. Its unique features include:

  • Ideal conditions for offshore wind: With shallow waters and consistent winds, the North Sea is perfectly suited for large-scale wind energy production.
  • Large-scale underground carbon storage: The North Sea's geological formations make it an excellent location for secure CO2 storage.
  • A pivotal energy hub: Historically central to oil and gas production, the North Sea is transitioning to a leading role in renewable energy for surrounding nations.

The North Sea provides opportunities to integrate diverse energy solutions and unlock synergies, including:

  • Wind energy
  • Hydrogen production
  • Solar and marine energy
  • Underground carbon storage
  • (Re)use of natural gas infrastructure

Our research focuses on the benefits of smartly connecting these energy systems, and benefit from the synergies to:

  • Reduce costs and accelerate deployment
  • Lower CO2 emissions
  • Optimize space use and minimize ecological impact

The North Sea is set to play a crucial role in Europe's journey to a sustainable, climate-neutral energy future. At NSE, we believe that treating the North Sea as an integrated energy system is key to unlocking a sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective energy transition.

Through cutting-edge research and collaboration, NSE identifies and assesses opportunities for synergies between various low-carbon energy developments offshore aiming to pave the way for a cleaner, more efficient offshore energy landscape.

Organisation

Program Management and Partners

The organisation of the North Sea Energy programme consists of the Program Management Team, supported by the Communication & Dissemination Team. Advisory roles are reserved for the Steering Committee, the Sounding Board and the Review Council.

The Program Management Team (PMT): Madelaine Halter: Program Manager; Joris Koornneef: Science Manager; René Peters: Business director.

They are supported by: Geeke Wiltink: Assistent; Susan Kimkes: Communications Lead; Mariken Betsema: Dissemination Lead; Jylles van der Vliet: Communication & Dissemination.

As Partners, organisations, companies and knowledge institutions in the programme share a connection to the North Sea. As an Innovation Line within the TKI New Gas, the North Sea Energy programme is supported by the Energy Innovation NL.

Sounding Board: Independent Advisory Role

The Sounding Board plays a vital advisory role within the North Sea Energy (NSE) program. Its members offer independent reflections and perspectives, drawing from their extensive knowledge, experience, and vision.

While they are not formal partners in the program, their valuable input ensures that the NSE program benefits from diverse viewpoints, fostering well-rounded and informed decision-making. The Sounding Board's contributions help enhance the program’s approach to offshore system integration and its alignment with societal, environmental, and economic goals.

During the period of the entire programme, representatives from several organisations participated in the Sounding Board.

Review Council New to his phase is an external review counsel that will be appointed to conduct paid reviews of the (intermediate) results with the purpose of further enhancing the quality of the deliverables.

Work packages

Co-creation in Work Packages

At the forefront of offshore energy innovation, North Sea Energy is a dynamic research program championing an integrated approach to the offshore energy system. Our mission is to identify and evaluate opportunities for synergy among multiple low-carbon energy developments in the North Sea, creating optimal value for society and nature. The central pillar of the current phase is the design of conceptual offshore energy hubs and clusters in the North Sea.

A participatory approach, knowledge sharing, and knowledge brokerage are central to all aspects of the program. These elements ensure that the research is shaped by collaboration and informed decision-making.

  • In the early stages of the program, consortium partners come together in workshops (as part of WP1) to guide the research focus in thematic work packages (WP2–WP4). These sessions also help define IT requirements (WP5) and select energy system models (WP1 and WP3) to support the program’s goals.
  • Developing scenarios for the North Sea Energy System is a collaborative effort involving all NSE partners and external stakeholders. Together, they: 1. Discuss available data, information, and knowledge essential for planning regional energy hubs, and 2. Identify gaps in knowledge, prioritizing these for the research community to address within the NSE program.
  • Workshops and alignment meetings bring together consortium members and external stakeholders to: Share knowledge and insights, Raise awareness of program goals and challenges, Co-create solutions and program deliverables that reflect a wide range of perspectives. This collaborative process ensures the NSE program is driven by shared expertise, enabling well-informed planning and impactful outcomes for the North Sea energy transition.

The Scientific Counsel will review the research work.

7 Work Packages

In 7 work packages we study how existing and new energy infrastructure assets (cables, wind farms, offshore solar, marine energy options, pipelines, platforms, islands, wells etc.) can be strategically combined to reduce cost, space and time for the energy transition.

The following work packages are defined for the hubs design process. They also give input to (inter)national offshore transition scenarios with an associated action plan to spur development on the short and long-term.

WP 1: North Sea Energy Hubs Cluster

Objective: identify, select, and assess innovative development scenarios and technology requirements for offshore energy hubs. These hubs serve as pivotal centers for the integrated production, storage, and transportation of renewable energy.

Output:

  • Individual and combined strategic development plans (concepts) for three conceptual offshore energy hubs in the North Sea.
  • Technologies and offshore marine energy technologies including wind, solar, wave, tidal options will be defined in an ESDL data repository.

Interaction with other work packages:

  • WP 5 develops the IT toolbox that is necessary to adopt (if needed) the ESDL data repository and develop the designs of the offshore hubs. WP 1 populates the ESDL repository with asset data and applies the toolbox to optimize the design on asset and hub level and simulate energy flows for hub configurations.
  • The ecological (environmental) impact of the technologies applied in the designs of the hubs will be studied in the Ecology work package 4 that aims to make the designs nature inclusive.
  • WP 1 contributes to specific thematic research in work packages 2, 3, 4 and 6.

WP 2: Society, Governance and Communications

Objective: Analyse the barriers and drivers from a governance & policy and society & stakeholders perspective. Identify and assess best practices on system integration for policy and markets in the North Sea region.

Output: Assembled barriers and drivers for informed decision making from governance, policy and stakeholder perspectives. Plans for knowledge dissemination of the program. Stakeholder engagement plans to allow for inclusive design of the hubs. Identified human capital needs & challenges and defined mitigation strategies.

Interaction with other work packages:

  • Gives feed into the iterative design of the offshore hubs (WP1)
  • Gives feed into the establishment of national and international transition scenarios for the North Sea (WP7).

Video's: we have recorded the outcomes of our previous work on stakeholder perceptions on the offshore energy transition. We also have a video of our work on the legal requirements for the offshore energy transition.

WP 3: Business Models and Value Assesment for offshore energy hubs

Objective: Design innovative business models supporting new value chains to give input to decision making on offshore energy hubs.

Output:

  • Insights on the public value and impacts on energy flows and price dynamics of an integrated offshore energy system in the North Sea.
  • Simulations of the assessed impact in different system configurations for the offshore hubs. The energy system model will be chosen by the consortium in the first phase of the program.

Interaction with other work packages and parties:

  • Help stakeholders to take action and decisions and share risk as part of hub realization, through the design of innovative business models.
  • Give detailed examples of business cases per value chain (e.g. Understanding the business case for stakeholders in the value chain from wind via hydrogen to steel making).
  • Deliver onshore industry cluster characterization in the Netherlands on demand, production, conversion and storage of the relevant energy commodities (h2, electricity, natural gas and co2) to make a better connect between onshore and offshore energy transition and connect with cluster energy strategies. Therefore NSE works actively together with the SINERGY consortium, which seeks to align onshore and offshore demand and supply. The SINERGY consortium is an initiative coordinated by the Tekenkamer van de Industrie, aimed to align off-shore developments and on-shore transition pathways in support of system integration for the Dutch energy system.

WP 4: Nature inclusive design

Objective: develop and apply principles to include ecology and nature in the design of the offshore energy system. Provide insights into the greenhouse gas emissions and material consequences of technology choices and deployment scenarios.

Output:

  • Add to existing work that is being performed on nature inclusive design of offshore wind. It also focuses on new offshore energy technologies within the context of an energy hub.
  • A weighed qualitative assessment will be made of the ecological benefits expected from this application as compared to the ‘standard’ hub design.
  • To complement research performed in previous phases of NSE on life cycle analyses this work package also includes new life cycle analysis on offshore marine energy options (solar focus).

Interaction with oher workpackges and others:

  • The results of this work package feed into the iterative design of the offshore hubs. WP1 is meant to apply the ecological principles to the design of one of the offshore hubs.
  • Review of raw material supply chains for offshore energy technologies, feeds into WP 6 on deployment scenarios in the North Sea (to understand technology deployment over time).
  • Results from earlier phases will be exploited fully in this work package, e.g. value assessment of offshore assets and NSE Atlas maps with ecological areas of importance and concern.

Video's: In an earlier phase of our programme we studied the carbon footprint of hydrogen.

WP 5: System design and analysis tool

Objective:

  • Develop and enhance the IT-toolkit, as the ICT Powerhouse of the NSE program. The IT-toolkit supports: system definition, system analysis and visualisation of results.
  • To allow safe information sharing assess digital technologies for improved design and operation of energy systems progressing on the digitization roadmap presented in the former phase of NSE.

Output: The first inventory on the role and potentials of safe data sharing between different stakeholders in the North Sea.

Interaction with other work packages and others

  • Support WP1, WP3 and WP7 in the areas of system definition, system analysis (techno-economics) and visualization
  • Use asset information (wind farm, H2 production platform etc) which is stored in a public accessible repository, the ESDL Mapeditor then allows to draw and define spatial explicit blue prints for the three offshore hubs. A selection of energy system simulation and optimization models/tools from the first scoping phase in the program can then be applied in WP1 and WP3.

WP 6: North Sea Energy Atlas and Spatial Planning

Objective: Improve the North Sea Energy Atlas, a tool to facilitate spatial optimization for offshore energy infrastructure for gasses and electricity while using new and existing assets or corridors (e.g. offshore pipelines). The optimization is based on cost and/or stakeholder preferences for avoiding spatial conflicts.

Output:

  • Deliver an improved update of the North Sea Energy Atlas, with enhanced quality of data, improved data and scenario selection, and improved visualization capabilities.
  • A white paper on multi-use of offshore space to support the transition of the North Sea in three important areas: energy, food & fibres and nature.

Interaction with other work packages and others:

  • The white paper sets guiding principles for multi-use of space work in WP1 and WP7.
  • Provide an improved logistics strategy for two of the selected NSE hubs. This is a follow up of the work that was started in the former phase on synergy in sharing offshore logistics.

WP 7: Offshore transition scenarios and international collaboration

Objective: Bring previous work on offshore transition pathways a step further.

Output:

  • The energy commodity transition pathways that were developed for the North Sea countries in the previous phase will be enriched with country specific details.
  • Also, spatial explicit scenarios will indicate the roll-out of the offshore energy transition in space and time.

Interaction with other work packages and others:

  • Collaboration between international partners within the NSE consortium and alignment with international RD&D programmes in at least the UK, Norway, Netherlands and Germany provides the opportunity to sketch offshore infrastructure pathways for electricity, hydrogen, natural gas and CO2 with the year 2050 as the foreseen end-point in the analysis.
  • Delivery of National Transition Scenarios for the Netherlands with a higher resolution on spatial developments and more detailed national action agenda based on envisaged input from the government, branch organizations and NGOs. This will refine the action agenda for the Netherlands that was developed in the previous phase.
  • This work package also hosts international knowledge sharing with networks and R&D programmes in the form of conferences, (online) workshops and webinars.

Video's and webinars

Dive into ... Energy Transition on the North Sea

Webinar: multi-use of space & offshore stakeholder engagement In March 2025 we organised a webinar, moderated by Rene Peters, to present insights on best practices in Offshore Stakeholder Engagement and Multi-use of space in the North Sea. Two topics that must be dealt with in the (offshore) energy transition, as the North Sea is among the busiest maritime areas in the world. The need for sustainable energy developments brings challenges and opportunities.

Check out the full recordings of the webinar:
Part 1: Multi-Use of Space in the North Sea

  • Presentation on Multi-use of offshore space - Moreno de Respinis (Arcadis)
  • Wind and mining activities in the North Sea; examples of challenging multi-use of space & possible solution - Audrey Roustiau (Energie Beheer Nederland)
  • Joris Koornneef (TNO/NSE)

Part 2: Offshore Stakeholder Engagement

  • Presentation on best practices in stakeholder engagement for offshore energy projects - George Wurpel (MSG Sustainable Strategies)
  • Presentation and discussion on Stakeholder engagement with NSE's partner – Tim Benard (Aramis CCS).

Webinar Series: Roadmap to an Integrated Offshore Energy System The North Sea region is poised to become Europe’s green power plant, requiring a large-scale rollout of offshore wind, solar, hydrogen production, CCS, and the phased-out transition from natural gas.

Our recorded webinar series explores the challenges and benefits of offshore system integration, featuring five 30-minute talk-show-style episodes. Hosted by Rene Peters, Marcel Hoenderdos, and George Wurpel, industry experts discuss key developments, opportunities, and solutions to unlock the low-carbon energy potential of the North Sea while balancing economic, societal, and environmental considerations.

Episode 1: NSE programne and roadmap Episode 2: Energy Hubs & Governance Episode 3: Modelling and Markets Episode 4: Offshore Logistics & Safety Episode 5: Ecology and Environment

Watch these 10 short clip VIDEOS recorded in 2021, with the highlights from previous work packages.

  1. Introduction to the North Sea Energy Program
  2. Energy Hubs
  3. Governance and Standardization
  4. Stakeholder Perspectives
  5. Safety, Integrity and Reliability
  6. Ecology and Environment
  7. Offshore Logistics
  8. Markets and Modelling
  9. An interactive North Sea Energy Atlas
  10. Roadmap to an Integrated System in 2050