Accelerating Clean Energy Offshore
On this page you can find information about the Marine Data Exchange Heritage Accelerator (MDEHA) project. This is a significant, innovative project on heritage information generated by marine development, funded through The Crown Estate’s Offshore Wind Evidence & Change (OWEC) programme. This project will help decision makers and developers in planning offshore wind farms. It will ultimately help to facilitate cleaner energy, as well as share knowledge about marine heritage.
When offshore wind farms and other forms of marine development are being planned and constructed, the results of geophysical and geotechnical surveys are used to provide information about heritage. Although very detailed, this information is not easy to find and use.
The MDEHA project will recapture heritage information from seabed surveys over the past 20 years and transfer it into archives and records within the Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange (MDE) and Historic England’s National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR) where it can be more easily discovered and explored.
Our project team, based within Historic England, is working in partnership with The Crown Estate’s OWEC and MDE teams, Historic England’s NMHR and marine planning teams and working closely with developers, leaseholders and archaeological contractors, to carry out this work between January 2025 and March 2027.
As of April 2025, our team has been auditing data and talking to stakeholders in preparation for receiving detailed heritage data from over 20 years of offshore development.
By using this data to enhance heritage information in The Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange and integrate it with Historic England’s National Marine Heritage Record the project will improve project-specific and strategic decision-making to achieve net zero through offshore wind expansion.
As the data is processed, our team will capture interesting news stories as well as informing and creating best practice guidance and improved data practices to ensure that existing and future development-led data will be more effectively found, accessed, combined, and reused (FAIR principles). This will inform further consenting, strategic assessments, spatial prioritisation, and public engagement.
This project plays a key role in speeding, improving and showcasing ways that heritage can contribute to delivering offshore wind, aligned with The Crown Estate’s Whole of Seabed programme. The programme models long term seabed use like never before, exploring how we can meet future demands - like achieving net zero by 2050 and recovering the marine environment – under a range of scenarios.
If you would like more information about this project, please contact our Customer Service Team at [email protected].
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