Floating Future Seminar and


BlueWeek success Seminars and workshops spark innovation


‘Better Ships, Blue Oceans’ is our credo. To achieve this, we are starting up research projects together with the industry, research organisations and institutions.


W


e want to contribute towards a more sustainable use of our oceans. Oceans where energy will be harvested, oceans


that will host sustainable activities, oceans that will carry zero emission transport and oceans that could inspire smarter engineering solutions.


This year we organised two events that were both attended by more than 150 people: the ‘Floating Future Seminar’ and ‘BlueWeek’.


The Floating Future Seminar highlighted the potential of the multi-use application of floating islands, while BlueWeek dealt with renewable ocean energy, the multi-use of offshore assets, zero emission shipping and nature-inspired solutions. BlueWeek also hosted different workshops, which challenged the participants to identify promising technologies and to anticipate how these could be put into practice.


Both events saw open and lively discussions and several trends and upcoming challenges were identified.


Guilhem Gaillarde & Olaf Waals


g.gaillarde@marin.nl 20 report


Floating islands The significant potential of combining activities on floating islands was broadly


accepted, despite the technical challenges. For example, consider bringing production plants and the maintenance of wind turbines close to the wind parks, creating nearby settlements for personnel and an energy hub to store the energy produced and a facility to distribute it directly to ships or container terminals. The dilemma between land reclamation in shallow water areas offshore and floating islands was also discussed.


Multi-use in sustainable offshore activities One of the most important trends in the ocean energy sector is the possibility for multi-use applications of wind parks, for example by combining them with aquaculture (mussels, seaweed) or floating solar farms. Concepts to rethink and optimise current wind turbine monopiles were proposed, whereby they should be designed for multi-use applications from the beginning. The risk management of wind park energy production, their impact on ecology and ecosystems, as well as the socio-cultural impacts were also brought forward. Moving traditional, land-based activities offshore and mixing them with sea-based activity would require understanding and consensus between all the parties. These themes were particularly highlighted within the North Energy Lab initiative and the Periscope Interreg


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