The ocean plays a vital role in the world’s economy. But it is threatened by climate change and overexploitation. Could the blue economy help?
Across Europe, the ocean provides food, energy, and a way to transport goods.
Ocean-related activities generated €624 billion in revenue and provided jobs for 3.6 million people in the European Union in 2021.
This part of the economy is known as the “blue economy”, which covers a range of sectors, including maritime transport, tourism, fishing and aquaculture, biotechnology and research, resource extraction and renewable energies.
But many of these industries are emissions-heavy and harmful to the environment. Maritime transport, for instance, was responsible for 3% to 4% of total EU emissions in 2019. Without a major shift towards reducing emissions, this number is projected to grow by at least 90% until 2050.
“The whole idea with having a sustainable blue economy is to keep the ocean healthy, and by doing that, you also get a more productive ocean,” says Jan-Gunnar Winther, researcher and pro-rector of the Arctic University of Norway (UiT).
Many companies and actors of the blue economy are moving in this direction. Initiatives such as building offshore wind farms for electricity, using ocean wave power for energy, or making sustainable aquaculture fish feed from algae are multiplying.
Upscaling solutions, a pressing challenge
A more sustainable use of ocean resources would also help increase sustainability in other parts of the global economy, notably in the transition to renewable energies through solutions like tidal energy and offshore wind farms.
But these initiatives often face structural obstacles that prevent them from upscaling.
Although there are concerns about the environmental impact of the construction of offshore wind farms, they are currently one of the lowest CO2-emitting ways of producing electricity.
Offshore wind energy is currently hampered by supply chain bottlenecks and problems with connecting farms to the electricity grid, according to Pierre Tardieu, Chief Policy Officer at WindEurope, an association promoting wind power in Europe.
“We have one very large offshore wind farm that is fully built in Germany, for example, 900MW that we’re not able to count in our wider statistics because they’re not yet connected to the grid,” he says.
Although the wind farm off the German island of Borkum is ready to produce electricity, there are currently no cables connecting it to the onshore electricity grid. Tardieu says it will take at least one more year for this to happen.
And across Europe, expanding the electricity grid to include cleaner solutions is a challenge.
How can these solutions grow while also ensuring environmental responsibility?
To find out, watch our video explainer above.
