The offshore wind industry is opening up new opportunities for solar panels, wave energy harvesters, and green hydrogen to piggyback on the operation. Seaweed farming is also beginning to make an appearance in amongst the wind turbines. Considering the rising interest in using seaweed for everything from food and fuel to plastics and pharmaceuticals, this could be the tip of a very big iceberg.
Arctic Seaweed aims to meet the growing demand for food-grade seaweed in Europe, with a focus on the speciesor sugar kelp. The company already has seagoing farms up and running in the area of Bergen, Ålesund and Greenland. Arctic Seaweed has developed a modular, automated approach that helps to resolve some of those issues. The missing link is ferrying the operation out to sea and maintaining it there, and that’s where Simply Blue comes in., and it has also begun scouting the idea of co-locating seaweed farms with offshore wind farms. The new partnership with Arctic Seaweed will enable Simply Blue to launch prototype seaweed farm, deploying offshore wind vessels to do the heavy lifting.
“In Europe, seaweed farming has not been developed to its full potential, due to the small scale of the enterprises, the limited number of seaweed species and traditional growing techniques,” pointed out Simply Blue Co-Founder and Group CEO Sam Roch Perks.