Sustainable exploitation of the North Sea

The North Sea offers many opportunities to exploit its wealth: think about traditional fishery, offshore wind or oil and gas exploration. However, many generations have exploited the North Sea, so we need to beware of exhaustion and pollution. Therefore, Rijkswaterstaat, the executive agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, wants to stimulate ideas to continue this exploitation in a sustainable and innovative way and launched the networking event iSea.

”The sea is hot. As Rijkswaterstaat is the marine management organisation for the North Sea, we want to stimulate innovations and sustainable ideas in the exploitation of the North Sea”, explained Mariska Harte, head of the Department of Planning and Advice of Rijkswaterstaat North Sea during her keynote speech. According to Rinke Zonneveld, director of the Department Entrepreneurship at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, ”the Netherlands stands strong when entrepreneurship is concerned and we should be prouder of this fact.” iSea took place on 14 December 2012 at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was well visited by young entrepreneurs, industry professionals, representatives from governmental bodies and knowledge institutes and investors. Next to inspiring presentations of successful start ups like Ampelmann, Catch Drive and Bluerise, attendees could also follow workshops about financing, subsidies and entrepreneurship. Pièce de résistance of the day was the Clash of the Concepts.

Clash of the Concepts

In two rounds, seven entrepreneurs and inventors battled for the most innovative and sustainable idea to exploit the North Sea by presenting their ideas. Boyan Slat with The Ocean Cleanup, Wouter Riedijk with his idea about modular, affordable, composite offshore wind turbines and Erwin Crough with the Slow Mill made it to the finals, where they presented their ideas to all participants of iSea and the final’s jury, Mariska Harte, Eelco Leemans (director of The North Sea Foundation), Willem Mak (vice director of programme directorate Water and International Water Affairs of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment) and Lex Vredeveldt (senior scientist at TNO).

Cleaning the oceans

18-year-old Boyan Slat wants to clean up the oceans by taking on the plastic soup, millions of tons of plastic debris that accumulate in five areas of high concentration, the so-called gyres. The plastic is not only a deadly threat to aquatic animals, but its fouling can also spread harmful algae and other invasive species. Moreover, it can transport pollutants, that accumulate in the food chain.

Removing the plastic from the ocean is expensive and extremely time-consuming, as it is estimated that it will take 79,000 years to free one gyre from the plastic soup. Slat came up with an inventive idea to clean up the five gyres – 40% of the plastic in the ocean – in only five years time per gyre by placing platforms in manta ray shape with ten kilometre long barriers of two to three metres deep and let the current and the wind do their job to direct the plastic to the platform.

There it is separated from any plankton and stored. According to Slat, this will produce the equivalent of about five containers of plastic per week per platform, which can later be fetched by barges and tugs. Another advantage of this method is that the plastic can be recycled, which would make more money than the plan would cost to execute, so the project is profitable.

Making wind turbines more economical

Second finalist Wouter Riedijk, cofounder of the company MOCS that develops processes to apply composite materials to several industries, has the idea to introduce modular composite offshore wind turbines. Current materials that are used for wind turbines are sensitive to corrosion. Also, the transport to the final destination and installation of the turbines are very expensive. However, offshore wind parks are in demand as the European vision is that in 2020, 20% of the energy should come from sustainable energy sources. Riedijk wants to reduce the costs by combining two factors: modular building and the use of composite material, which is lighter and has less wear and tear. MOCS has developed a way to join thermoset composites without any additives like glue, or the need for bolts. That makes that it is possible to build composites in a unique and reliable modular way. The modular, composite wind turbines have the advantage of a cheaper production, a cost reduction on transport and installation and they are practically maintenance-free.

Sustainable energy generation

The last finalist was Erwin Croughs with his Slow Mill. The world currently depends on energy from fossil sources. Croughs invented the Slow Mill, a light (50 tons per megawatt) wave energy converter using an innovative wave power technology capturing energy found in near-shore waves and converting it into electricity. The Slow Mill exploits ocean energy through an assembly of conical blades suspended under a floating body. They are connected to a winch on the seabed and when waves work against the blades they pull the rope that drives the winch which powers the generator. When the waves fall back the assembly rolls back as well and the generators act as a motor and wind up the rope to its starting position so the cycle can be repeated by the next wave. Tests conducted at the Delft University of Technology showed great efficiency.

Croughs: ”This project is an old idea of mine. I used to be a seafarer on a cruise ship and during storms the vessel was lifted by the waves. As a lot of power is needed to do that, I thought that waves could be used to produce energy. We started the development of the system about three years ago and we scheduled the first open sea trials for March, 800 metres off the coast of Scheveningen. When everything goes well, we plan to connect the Slow Mill to the grid in August or September and to test the system with MARIN to see how much it produces. The North Sea does not have great amounts of wave energy, but it is a good place for testing new concepts and the Slow Mill’s high yields are ideal for moderate wave conditions. We are in talks with Eneco and Greenchoice. The latter already consented in supporting our project.”

The winner

The jury judged the projects in regard to the innovative character, the link with the North Sea, feasibility and sustainability. In the end, they chose Slow Mill as the winner of the Clash of the Concepts, as they thought that the project ”is feasible and has the biggest possibility to become successful on the short term. Next to that, they felt this project could make the best use of the prize.” Croughs received an innovation voucher for € 10,000 to use at one of the cooperating knowledge institutes – Deltares, IMARES, MARIN, NIOZ and TNO – and also the knowledge institute will contribute a similar amount in expertise, knowledge and testing facilities. Moreover, the winner will be coached by the government to further develop the project. ”Winning the Clash of the Concepts is a huge recognition of our work”, says Croughs. ”Also, winning means that our financiers get a token of trust. I think that because of winning we might convince more financiers to support us, it is a stimulation of our project. The day was great, I was able to network a lot and it proved to be a very good support for my project. We will use the prize money for our tests with MARIN.”

Gail van den Hanenberg