From Environmental Benefits to Stronger Business Models

When we talk about “multi-use” at sea, it sounds abstract. But what it means is sharing offshore infrastructure and services so it serves more than one purpose. For example, imagine wind power working side by side with low-trophic aquaculture — mussels and seaweed that don’t just grow and can later be harvested, but during the process actively contribute to filtering the water, binding nutrients in their biomass and potentially forming a biodiversity-enhancing habitat.  

Why does this matter? Because the needs to mitigate climate-change effects and to use our oceans more wisely are already here. But here’s the thing: the real opportunity isn’t only environmental. It’s business. Multi-use has the potential to completely reshape the business model of offshore wind. And potentially create a regenerative business model. 

Take the Baltic Sea. It has been overloaded with nutrients and struggling with biodiversity deterioration for decades. Restorative acquaculture could play a part in changing that story. In Nordic Biobuz, the project where we are testing this combination of offshore wind and aquaculture, my role is to answer one big question: How can biodiversity gains and environmental benefits strengthen the business case for offshore wind?

Offshore wind certainly involves quite a complex business ecosystem, with:

• Long investment cycles
• High entry barriers
• Heavy regulation
• Dependence on partnerships (such as grids, public tenders, governments)
• High sensitivity to energy price market volatility

This means that the business model for multi-use ideally has to evolve early in the development phase.

In cross-sector workshops with developers, aquaculture experts, and marine researchers, we mapped 21 possible revenue streams and cost reductions that arise from our case of multi-use. After testing these against EU regulation, market maturity, investor trends, as well as insight interviews with industry experts, a few rose to the top:

• Biodiversity & carbon credits – tapping into fast-growing markets for measurable impact
• Premium Power Purchase Agreements - being rewarded a premium for biodiversity enhancement on the power purchasing price
• Aquaculture products – tangible outputs from restorative aquaculture
• Ecosystem investments – attracting capital earmarked for regenerative projects
• Access to impact investors – opening doors to new sources of financing
• Lower financing costs – biodiversity-positive projects get better loan terms
• Priority in tenders – aligning with EU’s Net Zero Industry Act, which rewards biodiversity

These are not “nice-to-have” extras, but can become core building blocks of a business model. Lowering risk, strengthening financing, and giving companies a competitive edge. And we need to explore these synergies in even more industries. Doing more with less is important, but if we can actually start regenerating nature that puts us in a far better position. Seeing biodiversity gains become a competitive advantage is a promising way to put more capital towards needed innovation. 

What comes next

The path forward is about forming the right partnerships, credibility and scale. That means building monitoring systems to prove biodiversity enhancement, aligning with high integrity principles like the ones coming from the BioCredit Alliance, and closely monitoring markets for nature credits and aquaculture products. At the same time, EU regulations are shifting. Procurement rules are beginning to reward biodiversity-positive projects, which translate directly into a business advantage.

So, if you are a business designer or developer:

• Treat biodiversity as a real opportunity for creating impactful regenerative business models and not merely as compliance
• Design it into the core business model as a source of resilience, financing, and competitive advantage

• In the coming years, the most successful offshore wind projects will not just generate renewable energy — they might contribute to regenerating ecosystems, and capture new markets built on biodiversity enhancement.

   

Further reading:

• Alleway et al. (2023). Global principles for restorative aquaculture to foster aquaculture practices that benefit the environment. Conservation Science and Practice.
• Konietzko et al. (2023). Towards regenerative business models: A necessary shift? Sustainable Production and Consumption.