Oceanic Sectors – At a Glance
Al least 3-5% of global GDP is derived from oceans.
By 2030, they are estimated to contribute US$3 trillion to the global economy, particularly due to the promise of marine aquaculture, marine capture fisheries, marine fish processing, offshore wind, and port activities, although this has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 90% of traded goods are via ocean shipping.
Shipping accounts for 2.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, but this share could triple by 2050.
Tourism accounts for 30% of export revenues for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which account for 1% of the world’s population and 20% of the UN membership. Globally, tourism is projected to decline 58-78% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This may lead to global GDP decline by 1.5-2.8 percent and translate into 120 million lost jobs .
The Blue Economy is of particular value even to small islands as the ocean area under their jurisdiction is often much larger than their land area. This allows tremendous potential for Blue Economy sectors to develop for socio-economic sustainable development.
Engineers are exploring a range of future world visions for urban growth that includes floating cities . These visions of the future are useful to develop new technologies and explore ways to crowdsource ideas in a structured manner for what may look like science-fiction now but could be normal in a few decades.
Tourism 4.0 is an initiative dedicated to co-creating tourism with the help of data analytics. The initiative aims to boost coastal destinations visibility, improve socio-economic returns and decrease the negative impacts of tourism by enabling local stakeholders to understand current tourism trends, patterns of tourist flow and the impact of visitors helping them in taking strategic data driven decisions. Few of its enabling technologies include a modern e-voucher to award individuals and organizations for their positive impact behavior and digital passport providing a personal encrypted cold wallet for personal data and profile.
Trade via shipping has always been a part of the blue economy since it first began 5,000 years ago. The key factors that are driving global shipping are population, economic growth and the requirements to carry raw material and intermediary and end products from production centers to consumers. In 2016, the total tonnage shipped by marine transport was estimated to be 10.3 billion
. To reduce the cost of shipping, heavy fuel oil is
used by 60 percent of ocean bound large vessels because it is 30 percent cheaper. However, this fuel is a toxic sludge of oil, gas, chemicals that are remnants of the distillation and cracking process of crude oil.2% of global emissions in 2019 were from the international shipping sector( IEA ). The International Maritime Organisation , committed in 2018 to reduce emissions in the international shipping industry by 50% in 2050, an ambition that requires concrete regulations and measures in the entire industry to achieve, this reduction. One such example is to reduce air pollution from ships since PM 2.5 and high sulfur content can cause around 14 million childhood asthma and 400,000 premature deaths . To reduce the impact of sulfur pollutants, the International Maritime Organization began enforcing a sulfur cap beginning January 1, 2020, to reduce the sulfur content in fuel from 3.5 percent to 0.5 percent by weight.
Air-cushion technology for hulls of ships, where the front of the ship is shaped to allow an air cushion to form underneath the hall while the ship is moving. This reduces friction between the ship and the water, enabling more propulsion with less fuel use. Air cushion technology can cut emissions by 10-15%
To reduce fuel consumption on ships by up to 14% , waste heat from exhaust gases can used to heat and generate steam for heating cargo area, accommodation, fuel oil etc
Researchers from the European project SCIPPER are using a number of innovative pollution-measuring techniques from drones and next-generation coastal sensors to space satellites to measure emissions from ships at both the harbors and other parts of the cities, to be able to compare accuracy and reliability of results, through collecting samples from exhaust plumes and modeling, for inspectors be used to enforce compliance with regulations on emissions and pollution.
The Mayflower Autonomous Ship , a research marine vessel led by Promare , supported by IBM and a global consortium of partners/ it is a solar energy and AI powered vessel, with no humans is conducting research on critical issues: global warming, ocean plastic pollution and marine mammal conservation. The vessel which has on board 6 AI powered cameras,30 onboard sensors, 15 edge services. The vessel works in tandem with oceanographers and other vessels, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, will spend long durations at sea, carrying scientific equipment and making is own decisions about how to optimize its route and mission, machine learning and automation software, ensure that decisions made are safe and in-line with collision regulations. The Mayflower was launched on September 15,2020. More on the Mayflower Autonomous Ship
There are many ways in which the oceans offer opportunities for clean energy.
The global electricity demand is increasing due to population growth and rising household incomes, increasing the power consumption of digital devices, air conditioning, electric cars, etc. Currently, electricity is predominantly generated through fossil fuels but have an adverse impact on the environment due to climate change. Renewable energy production has dramatically increased, as shown in the nearby figure, but is facing nimby (not in my back yard) syndrome. Offshore renewable in the ocean would mitigate this risk and don't take up high property value land space. For example, China has installed 2,788 MW of offshore wind power and currently leads the world. It's expected that China would produce 52 GW of energy from a fifth of the global wind turbines at decades end. A World Bank report estimated the energy potential of 3.1 TW from Brazil, India, Morocco, the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Vietnam. Relative to the 28 EU countries, this would be greater than three times the installed capacity.
Denmark too currently has 21 operating offshore wind farm projects and with its new climate package, it is on its way to build two giant ‘energy islands’ with an offshore wind energy capacity of 5GW, which will act as hubs of wind energy and will provide electricity between the countries connected to the islands.
“Flotovoltaics” or floating solar – the installation of solar photovoltaic panels floating on the surface of lakes, hydropower reservoirs, agriculture reservoirs, industrial ponds, and near-coastal areas – is one of the fastest-growing power generation technologies today. It opens new horizons to scale up of solar power globally, particularly in countries with land constraints. The installed capacity globally at the end of 2014 was 10MW, however there has been exponential growth in floating solar, as of September 2018, installed capacity was 1.1GW. ( World Bank )
France’s O’MEGA1 project , a 17MW floating solar power plant is first of its kind for the country. Saving 1093 tonnes of CO2 every year, its solar modules are made from a recyclable material which has the capacity to withstand winds up to 210km/hr. Many other countries too are taking a lead in this direction with South Korea’s large, rotating 465-kilowatt solar plant in its Gyeonggi－do Province, India’s 500 kWp (kilowatt peak) floating power plant in Wayanad, Kerala, China’s 70MW floating solar project (about the size of 121 football fields) in Anhui, among others.
Technology is helping to break physical barriers that once were insuperable. One great example of this is underwater agriculture technology that aims to create an alternative system of farming, especially oriented to overcome harsh environmental conditions in those areas where growing crops is extremely difficult. There are very disruptive approaches to imagining a possibility of growing freshwater plants under the sea.
Nemo’ Garden project is changing the way farming is done. It aims to make underwater farming an economically viable and an alternative system of agriculture, especially in areas with extremely difficult environmental conditions. The project, built in the Italian north-western coast, consists of an underwater farm composed of air-filled clear plastic pods, anchored to the bottom of the sea by chains and screws. Each pod holds approximately 2,000 thousand liters of air and float at different depths, between 15 and 36 feet below the surface of the water so they are within the reach of sunlight, allowing the plants to thrive underwater.
Greenwave’s 3D Ocean Farming is one such another initiative, which is basically a vertical underwater garden. It’s a form of aquaculture which involves growing shellfish, scallops, mussels, seaweeds and such as kelp at varying levels of the water column.
Bangladesh has pioneered the use of floating gardens to grow vegetables based on the resurgence of a traditional practice to improve climate resilience.
There are other innovative new approaches that are also exploring taking the pressure off the land to do agriculture on or under the high seas.
Globally, there has been a great interest in looking at the ocean’s creatures for pharmaceutical compounds in drug development since the ocean has the greatest diversity of microbes and animals on the planet. One of the first instances of marine pharmaceuticals was in the 1950s was the development of a cancer-treating drug from marine sponges. Today, there have been numerous drugs that have been developed, and here is a couple of examples facing today’s challenges. A powerful non-addictive drug that is 1000 times more powerful than morphine to prevent pain was developed from a snail whose venom could kill an adult. Cone snail’s venom has more than 100 different peptides (a short chain of amino acid). One peptide is highly effective against pain, with the only downside is that it must be injected into the spine since it doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier. To determine if vaccines or medical equipment have bacterial contamination, the horseshoe crab, an animal that has been around for 450 million years, blood has unique properties. The blood is blue from copper, milky, and is the only natural source of Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL). LAL is incredibly sensitive in detecting bacterial endotoxins and automatically clots or change color when exposed. Lastly, squalene is extracted commercially from shark liver oil and is being used adjuvant (a booster for immune response) to develop vaccines against COVID.
As the ocean economy contributes to the overall global economy, there could also be several ways in which it can contribute to both local and global climate resilience (e.g. through improved seascape management as described in the next section).