Sustainable Marine has formed a strategic partnership with Portugal’s blueOASIS to develop a range of ‘SIDS-appropriate’ marine renewable energy solutions, that can help unlock the vast ocean energy potential of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
The partnership will combine the firms’ respective world-class expertise in technical Research & Development to support the wider Blue Economy, and practical experience in delivering modular marine energy systems in environments with limited infrastructure.
Sustainable Marine specialises in the development of modular platforms, mooring and anchoring solutions for marine renewable energy, floating wind and nearshore structures. Fast-expanding R&D and Consultancy firm, blueOASIS focuses on performing state-of-the-art applied research to foster secure, clean and efficient sustainable maritime solutions, and promote full decarbonization of the oceans.
This announcement follows the launch of the Global Ocean Energy Alliance (GLOEA), at this year’s UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, designed to address the needs of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and coastal developing countries – particularly least developed countries (LDCs) – providing greater access to ocean energy technology, finance and expertise (see notes to editors). GLOEA was officially formed by the Small Island Sustainable Energy and Climate Resilience Organization (SIDS DOCK) in partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Stimson Center Alliance for a Climate Resilient Earth (ACRE).
Energy accounts for the highest share of imports to SIDS, which are almost entirely dependent on fossil fuel imports for electricity generation and transport. However, huge opportunity lies dormant in their vast ocean territories and Exclusive Economic Zones, which represent 30 per cent of all oceans and seas.
Sustainable Marine CEO Jason Hayman said if effectively harnessed, ocean energy will spur economic diversification, deliver energy resilience and provide a clean alternative to displace diesel-fuelled energy generation, enabling the development of truly sustainable blue economies within SIDS’ vast ocean jurisdictions.
“A clear message was delivered throughout the UN Ocean Conference week – we must invest in our blue economy to build our green economy,” said Mr Hayman. “It is now widely acknowledged that the Sustainable development of our oceans is both imperative and intrinsic in solving the climate crisis. While there is huge opportunity to innovate across the blue economy sector at large, ocean energy offers a unique long-term solution to dramatically accelerate and sustain the energy transition. The challenge is to develop technology solutions that are relevant for SIDS and coastal developing countries, which are currently experiencing a savage economic shock due the rapidly rising cost of diesel.
“As a company, Sustainable Marine has developed a formidable track record developing marine renewable energy systems to power blue economy solutions. We have been largely focussed on instream tidal energy systems for the past decade, and our team have been involved in deploying modular, community-scale systems in Canada, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. Our latest project in Canada, which recently started delivering energy to the local electricity grid, is located in a channel between two islands and was designed to be assembled and launched at a small local shipyard close to the site. These types of systems are ideal for island and coastal countries as they can be built, launched, installed and maintained using local infrastructure with capacity easily scaled-up as required through the deployment of multiple systems. Through our new partnership with blueOASIS we will combine our extensive knowledge and knowhow in this specialist sector, to develop solutions that can harvest energy from a variety of renewable energy sources, and provide the necessary industry expertise to support new initiatives like GLOEA and help deliver the United Nations’ broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
By 2030 the blue economy is expected to more than double its contribution to global value added, reaching over USD 3 trillion, creating more than 40 million jobs. Aside from ocean energy technologies, the sector requires widespread innovation across fisheries, aquaculture, desalination, freshwater, biotechnology, ocean intelligence, shipping and port services.
Sustainable Marine and BlueOASIS’ new partnership aligns with several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including; SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 10 Reduce Inequalities, SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG Resonsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 Climate Action, SDG 14 Life Below Water, SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals.
“The UN Ocean Conference provided the perfect backdrop to launch our partnership with Sustainable Marine, with new global initiatives like GLOEA kickstarting a new chapter in global ocean action,” said blueOASIS CEO Guilherme Vaz. “The motto of blueOASIS ‘Making the world green and the oceans blue’, seems to be in perfect harmony with UN Ocean conference main message: we need blue to be green. And we must do this all together, since there are no borders when talking about ocean sustainability and climate change. Therefore, international alliances like this are essential to build a bridge between technology developers like Sustainable Marine and R&D consultancy companies like blueOASIS. Together we will redouble our efforts to deliver progressive solutions for the Blue Economy sector at large, working in harmony with nature. The focus in this particular SIDS context is to scale down the existing complex and expensive structures and make them affordable. We have to democratize renewable energy, to make it accessible to smaller economies with minimal supporting infrastructure.”
Sustainable Marine specialises in the development of modular platforms, mooring and anchoring solutions for marine renewable energy, floating wind and nearshore structures. Fast-expanding R&D and Consultancy firm, blueOasis, focuses on performing state-of-the-art and leading-edge applied research to foster secure, clean and efficient sustainable maritime solutions, and promote full decarbonization of the oceans.
UN Ocean Conference 2022
The 2022 UN Ocean Conference was co-hosted by the Governments of Kenya and Portugal. It was staged at a critical time as the world is seeking to address the many of the deep-rooted problems of our societies laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and which will require major structural transformations and common shared solutions anchored in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. During this year’s event, the UN stated that solutions for a sustainably managed ocean involve green technology and innovative uses of marine resources. They further include addressing threats to health, ecology, economy and governance of the ocean – acidification, marine litter and pollution, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and the loss of habitats and biodiversity.
GLOEA Global Ocean Energy Alliance
GLOEA was officially launched on 29 June 2022, in Lisbon, Portugal, during the UN Ocean Conference 2022, by the Small Island Sustainable Energy and Climate Resilience Organization (SIDS DOCK) in partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Stimson Center Alliance for a Climate Resilient Earth (ACRE). The GLOEA is being initiated with support of the Governments of Austria and Norway under the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres Program (GN-SEC). GLOEA will focus on accelerating the development of ocean energy projects through partnerships that mobilize technical, human and financial resources and aims to establish a global community of vested interest with the capacity to develop a pipeline of bankable ocean energy projects to serve islands, cities and coastal nations. Moreover, it intends to build a pipeline of bundled investment projects. The mobilization of risk capital for technology demonstrations will be an important role of the Alliance. Its establishment follows two high-level events where Heads of State and Government from Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developing Countries (LDCs) made two appeals for a Call To Action! for the Establishment of the Global Ocean Energy Alliance (GLOEA), at the sixth session of the Assembly of SIDS DOCK, held on the margins of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on 28 September 2021, and on the margins of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP26), on 11 November 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland.
Sustainable Marine
Sustainable Marine is an innovative solutions provider empowering the development of a sustainable blue economy. The company has developed several pioneering products, including PLAT-I, a floating tidal energy platform that delivers predictable and clean energy to coastal communities. It also offers a range of unique anchoring solutions, which are delivered by the specialist Swift Anchors team, that provide rapid, secure, and precise mooring, or fixation, of support structures for renewable energy systems, and other infrastructure in high energy marine environments with challenging geotechnical conditions. Through a talented team of engineers and innovators operating from the United Kingdom, Germany, , and Canada, Sustainable Marine provides turnkey project management with world-class expertise in naval architecture, site assessment and selection, front-end engineering and design, mooring and station-keeping, floating structure design and construction, hydrokinetic power systems, and the development of logistics, installation, operational, environmental monitoring and performance monitoring solutions. To learn more visit www.sustainablemarine.com
blueOASIS
BlueOASIS is a Portuguese R&D company that fosters the development of ground-breaking Offshore Renewable Energy, Aquaculture, Underwater Acoustics, Ocean Cleaning and Decarbonization solutions. All this using modern Industry 4.0 approaches, such as Data Science, Numerical Modelling, Potential and Viscous Flow (CFD), High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence tools, in an open and collaborative manner. It is formed by a young multicultural team (Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Brazilian collaborators) with more than 50 years of gathered knowledge and experience on Aerospace, Mechanical, Naval, Maritime Engineering and Environmental Impact issues. blueOASIS cooperates tightly with major universities and research institutes in Europe and has access to a high-level external collaborator team spread around the World. Their tools, programming, CFD, AI skills and HPC knowledge/facilities (they have more than 40,000 computing cores of HPC power spread around Europe) making them an asset for any Ocean Sustainability project, and a unique company in Portugal. To learn more visit www.blueoasis.pt.
. The partnership will combine the firms’ respective world-class expertise in technical Research & Development to support the wider Blue Economy, and practical experience in delivering modular marine energy systems in environments with limited infrastructure. Sustainable Marine specialises in the development of modular platforms, mooring and anchoring solutions for marine renewable energy, floating wind and nearshore structures. Fast-expanding R&D and Consultancy firm, blueOASIS focuses on performing state-of-the-art applied research to foster secure, clean and efficient sustainable maritime solutions, and promote full decarbonization of the oceans. This announcement follows the launch of the Global Ocean Energy Alliance (GLOEA), at this year’s UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, designed to address the needs of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and coastal developing countries - particularly least developed countries (LDCs) - providing greater access to ocean energy technology, finance and expertise (see notes to editors). GLOEA was officially formed by the Small Island Sustainable Energy and Climate Resilience Organization (SIDS DOCK) in partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Stimson Center Alliance for a Climate Resilient Earth (ACRE).){kind=link}