2022 SOST Opportunities and Actions Roundtable
Summary: Governments and industries are fast developing floating offshore wind farm capacities that will provide significant amounts of renewable energy in the coming years. With the vast amount of offshore space that these floating wind farms will take, a variety of other sustainable economic opportunities that could fill in this space would become open. In addition to renewable energy, these would include blue food production systems (e.g. aquaculture, seaweed), macroalgae production systems (e.g. fuel, biomaterials, carbon sequestration, marine protected areas, and eco-tourism), science and research, data collection points, floating city design and engineering concepts just to name a few.
These integrated offshore economies would provide significant economic activity, research potentials and job creation possibilities (especially for under-represented communities) that cannot be overstated. They would also provide considerable geopolitical strategic advantages to the countries that get it right.
European countries, which are much farther ahead with the development of their offshore wind sector, are already exploring offshore integrated economies concepts.
The offshore wind sector in the Northeast Coast US is already being developed. However, in the Westcoast USA, the sector is just getting started. Given this nascent stage of development, it is recommendable to consider a strategy for how to create integrated offshore economies.
This concept is being researched by Global Ecosystem for Ocean Solutions (GEOS). Geos is endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science and Sustainable Development, which aims to “establish a vibrant, global ocean solutions community of researchers, innovators, investors, decision-makers and other stakeholders to co-design and co-deploy equitable, durable, and scalable ocean-based solutions for climate change and ocean grand challenges”.
Sector: Nonprofit
Organization: TMA BlueTech
POC: Matt Classen, mclassen@tmabluetech.org