Plausible 2050 offshore wind locations in the North Sea

This dataset contains a set of zones and points representing plausible locations for offshore wind farms and individual turbines to have been built in the North Sea by the years 2030, 2040, and 2050, based off the national ambitions announced up to summer 2024.

This version 4 released April 2026.
Version 4 changed only this readme file, in order to point to the now-published linked journal article. See readme.pdf for details of earlier versions and a changelog.

A full description of how these coordinates were arrived at is currently under development as a journal article, and once it is available this readme will be updated to link to it. Check the "latest version" link in Zenodo to see if this has already happened.

If using this version, please cite the dataset directly using the title and authors above and DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19556859. Please consider citing the accompanying article.

Please do not use "OSW zones.png" for serious work; use the underlying data instead. The image is included so as to give a useful preview in Zenodo.