BLUE DEAL launches an initiative to create a Blue Energy Transnational Alliance

The European project BLUE DEAL is launching a new initiative in which it seeks to establish regional cooperation between different stakeholders to promote Blue Energy (BE) in the Mediterranean (MED).

The aim is to use the quadruple helix stakeholders’ approach to create a meeting point in which to generate a dialogue, an exchange of ideas, experiences, tools, and opportunities to accelerate blue growth development in the region.

This initiative is being set up following the experience and results obtained in two previous projects, MAESTRALE, and PELAGOS where the different renewable marine sources and devices were investigated and a geographical approach to blue energy issues was implemented, with the creation of a Webgis and a BLUE ENERGY CLUSTER portal.

Scope of the BLUE DEAL Alliances is to spread opportunities for business and entrepreneurship, support new initiatives by companies in BE deployment in the MED area, whilst including the involvement of citizens, as interested parties, consumers, and potential producers.

The exploitation of BE is going to play a vital role in achieving the Green Deal, thus it is important to know what technologies are profitable and where to implement them, considering also the other sectors involved like fishing, tourism, and ecological factors such as the marine ecosystem, bird migrations etc.

The BLUE DEAL project is launching the 9 Regional Alliances, across 7 Countries: Albania, Crete, Croatia, Cyprus, Italy (Latium and Tuscany), Slovenia, and Spain (Comunitat Valenciana and Andalusia).

These multilevel BE networks will create basic guidelines about how to plan blue energy development considering environmental, legal and social constraints. The objective is to bring into contact different actors to discuss, share local experiences, and determine a set of general procedures and common operational tools for the integration of blue energy technologies in regional energy plans.

Entities and enterprises that join these Alliances will: enlarge their networks, gain opportunities for international cooperation, receive information on financial opportunities, discover other existing networks and tools, understand how to recognise socially and environmentally approved projects, and learn how to develop and launch marine renewable energy projects, amongst others.

Simone Bastianoni, the BLUE DEAL Coordinator remarks “In the Blue Deal Alliances those who look for competences can find them; those who provide competences can be found. Consensus can be formed around practical solutions”.

Interested people can register in the platform and contact BLUE DEAL here: https://bluedealmed.eu/

BLUE DEAL is a European project made up of 12 partners from 6 Mediterranean countries and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Instrument for the Pre-accession Assistance Fund, with a budget of 2.8 million euros.