Teresa Cardoso (p), Regina Salvador

Samuel Bicego

The acceleration of energy consumption has been subject of special attention from both the political class and the scientific community. There is a need to take measures aiming to reduce the use, or even non-use, of fossil fuels. On the one hand, to combat climate change, and on the other, to ensure countries' energy independence. In this context, targets have been set for the incorporation of renewable energies into gross final consumption, especially with the use of floating offshore wind energy, due to the maturity of the technology. In addition, floating wind energy will contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Portugal is no exception. In fact, its geographical location gives it a significant advantage when it comes to utilising this renewable resource. Mainland Portugal's maritime space, under national sovereignty or jurisdiction, extends over 591502 km2. If, on one hand, the ocean's tri-dimensionality poses challenges in terms of governance and maritime spatial planning, on the other hand, it allows for various human activities and use. This work presents a case study, the implementation of two offshore floating wind farms in two areas in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Viana do Castelo), with a capacity of 1.98GW. The exclusion criteria, among other things, for geo-referencing the areas were analysed. Different scenarios were created using the OffshorePlan platform and the economic and financial viability of the project was assessed by analysing the sensitivity of the Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return and the Payback Period indicators. The variations between the probable values imposed by potential shareholders - NPV (2.5 M€), IRR (10%) and Payback Period (10 years) and those obtained - NPV (3 M€), IRR (13.18%) and Payback Period (9.3 years) - were exceeded by 22%, 31.8% and 7.5%, respectively. These results support the decision to approve investment in the hypothetical economic operator's project. The values obtained for the Levelised Cost of Electricity are also considered acceptable.

Sónia Goulart (p)

Teresa Cardoso

The Canada’s Ocean Super-Cluster was launched in the early 2018, by the Federal Government, aiming to define a strategy able to support innovation and economic growth from coast-to-coast-to-coast.
Canada has the largest coastline in the world and, along with it, many subsea resources and a highly productive ecosystem. Therefore, conditions are met for the engagement of experts in ocean technology and the search for innovative solutions, in what sustainability, job creation, and competitiveness are concerned.
Canada’s Ocean Mega-Cluster was launched as an industry-led transformative cluster model. Canada’s OSC is an innovative cluster, designed by the Government to promote Ocean economic growth, by involving all interested parties into a large-scale technology--focused plan.
To achieve this goal, OSC is funded by both public and private entities, in equal shares. It also integrates all type of members, from small to large organisations, from individuals to local communities (including Indigenous Communities), small and medium enterprises (SME) to big companies, and universities. Each one can have a main role and contribute to boosting maritime economy.
From all the above, OSC is a praiseworthy initiative, that can be replicated across the globe, as it recognises and values the initiative of all seeking to leverage the ocean economy, with contributions from across the all country.

Felipe Santos, Samuel Bicego (p), Ademir Rocha, Eduardo Haddad

Sónia Goulart

The maritime economy has been the subject of distinct studies focused on measuring its importance for the economy of a given region or country, especially in the context of island economies. This study aims to define the systemic contribution of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (IOM) to the blue economy by integrating the Satellite Account for the Sea with an interregional input-output table and performing a hypothetical extraction of the sector.
In order to do so, we established a novel approach to integrate the SAS with IOM, which is to distribute the values of the satellite account based on proxies as we would do if all possible information was available. Taking the data of production from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) to each activity and considering the distribution of the proportion of blue economy in each US industry, we can approximately identify the use of sea by subclass and finally aggregate it into 65 sectors. Based on this data, new Technical Coefficient and Leontief Inverse Matrices are calculated and, along with the coefficients, new vectors for the interested dimensions, which are added value, employment composition and CO2 emissions.
We found that the impact of the blue economy on the Madeiran economy itself is 16% of the added value and 750 million euros (0.37%) of the Portuguese economy. Regarding the composition of labor, about 50% of the direct and indirect jobs linked to the sea are for young people aged 15 to 24. Almost 50% of the total effect relates to women's employment, mainly in the RAM itself.
This result suggests that the Madeiran blue economy has relevance in promoting jobs with greater gender equality and contributing to regional development by retaining young people in the RAM, mitigating the effects of demographic transition in the region. We intend to improve the estimation with access to microdata and also construct indicators regarding CO2 emissions relative to cross-sectoral and cross-regional with the aim of assessing the contribution of the blue economy to low-carbon development.