İhtilaflı Deniz Yetki Alanlarında Yenilenebilir Enerji Üretimi: Deniz Hukuku Çerçevesinde Hukuka Uygunluğunun ve Sınırlarının Değerlendirilmesi

Marine renewable energy generation has become an increasingly important component of sustainability and climate change mitigation policies and has attracted significant investment, thereby increasing demand for suitable maritime areas. Marine renewable energy projects can be implemented only in particular geographical locations due to requirements such as proximity to land, grid connections, and appropriate environmental conditions. This spatial constraint increases the likelihood that the remaining suitable maritime areas will coincide with regions where States’ jurisdictional entitlements or maritime delimitation claims overlap. Although claimant States may manage the disputed area jointly through agreements, unilateral renewable energy activities by such States remain a realistic prospect. Such situations may also give rise to legal and diplomatic difficulties, since the existing law of the sea framework does not provide detailed rules governing unilateral renewable energy activities in disputed maritime areas. In other words, neither treaty provisions nor international judicial practice has yet addressed marine renewable energy activities, and disputes arising from them, in a direct manner. In order to fill this gap, the legal consequences of marine renewable energy activities in disputed maritime areas, together with the rights and obligations of States in those areas, should be assessed. This study examines the extent to which the principles developed around Articles 74(3) and 83(3) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, namely the obligation not to jeopardise or hamper the reaching of a final agreement and the principle of entering into provisional arrangements, as well as general principles of law including in particular the duty of restraint frequently invoked in disputes concerning mineral resources, may be applied to marine renewable energy activities. In doing so, the study aims to clarify how renewable energy installations may be interpreted in light of environmental impacts and criteria of reversibility across their installation, operation, and decommissioning phases.