Offshore multi-purpose platforms for a Blue Growth: A technological, environmental and socio-economic review

Abstract

Blue Growth" and "Blue Economy" is defined by the World Bank as: "the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem". Multi-purpose platforms (MPPs) can be defined as offshore platforms serving the needs of multiple offshore industries (energy and aquaculture), aim at exploiting the synergies and managing the tensions arising when closely co-locating systems from these industries.Despite a number of previous projects aimed at assessing, from a multidisciplinary point of view, the feasibility of multipurpose platforms, it is here shown that the state-of-the-art has focused mainly on single-purpose devices, and adopting a single discipline (either economic, or social, or technological, or environmental) approaches. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to provide a multidisciplinary state of the art review on, whenever possible, multi-purpose

Toward a Sustainable Decommissioning of Offshore Platforms in the Oil and Gas Industry: A PESTLE Analysis

“…In fact, the marine context can provide an increasing number of maritime-related job opportunities related to goods and services on seafood, shipping, fishing, as well as tourism activities: the largest share of such jobs is related to seafaring tourism and the enormous range of activities on offer (e.g., health, cultural, creative) [73]. The reconversion of these platforms in favor of multi-purpose initiatives has significant potential also in terms of the reduction of operational costs for the offshore energy and aquaculture industry by means of concerted spatial planning and the sharing of infrastructure [74]. In such a direction, a revision of the offshore decommissioning regulatory framework appears necessary, including a temporary suspension of the obligatory removal and the adoption of a sustainable perspective [75,76].…”

Infrastructure Interdependencies: Opportunities from Complexity

“…Spurred by intergovernmental targets on sustainability and renewable energy production, interest has grown recently in the concept of ocean platforms to support multiple uses, especially combining wind and wave energy generation while in some cases also including aquaculture installations. The advantages of such platforms in shared costs, smoothed power output and combined construction and maintenance efforts make them an attractive proposition; however, their implementation currently faces barriers in the lack of unified governance and support, longer development times, uncertainties around insurance and risk, and the immaturity of important technologies in wave energy capture and local energy storage (Abhinav et al 2020;Pérez-Collazo et al 2015;Stuiver et al 2016).…”

Modeling Small Scale Impacts of Multi-Purpose Platforms: An Ecosystem Approach

“…Combining the extraction of more than one marine resource has been suggested as a solution for lowering energy production costs by allowing shared use of space and infrastructure through co-located technologies (Stefanakou et al, 2016;Stuiver et al, 2016). Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) systems such as offshore wind farms, wave device converters, solar energy storage systems, as well as aquaculture, transport and leisure facilities have been proposed as suitable candidates for co-location of Multi-Purpose Platforms (MPPs) (Da Rocha et al, 2010;Casale et al, 2012;Quevedo et al, 2013;H2Ocean, 2018;Abhinav et al, 2020).…”