A' stiùireadh an eaconamaidh ghorm - Leading the blue economy

good afternoon everybody my name is nick owens and i'm going to be chairing this webinar on the blue economy uh welcome to you all we have a very good number of people attending and i'm sure we're in for him for a good a good treat here um i you have heard i hope the message that the meeting is being recorded however none of the participants have their cameras enabled so nobody will be able to see participants the panelists can be seen but even if you don't like the notion that you can't be seen if you would prefer not to take part in a meeting that's been recorded now i would suggest that now's the time time for you to leave um the we have a range of speakers there which i'll mention something about each one of them in a in a minute and what we're going to do with the question and answers is if you could use the use the chat box there um then what we will do is we will take questions at the end and so what we don't want to do is to is to disturb uh the flow of the meeting so we'll take the questions at the end our host jill mcnichol um will be collating those and keeping an eye on those on those as they as they as they come in um so we have a um a a glittering um array of speakers we have a fine constellation of stars here first first of all we have ben wilson from sam's there ben is a researcher working on the links between marine life and industrial activities in coastal waters and in particular on the interactions of the renewable energy sector and marine mammals then we have um amanda ryan um who is uh chair of the crown of state scotland uh she's a chartered forester um and has extensive experience in rural and community development and stakeholder engagement and uh amanda is also a member of the highest islands uh a board member of the heinz enterprise so that's an important role that that she plays there uh then we have michael michael tate who's managing director of the shetland muscles limited um michael has extensive experience in the wide range of of aquaculture activities particularly salmon farming he was the board member or is a board member still on the scottish shellfish marketing group and is also a board member on the scottish aquaculture innovation center representing uh the sm smes and that's a very active organization and very important within the scottish aquaculture scene then we have audrey audrey mac who is director of energy and low carbon at thailands and islands enterprise audrey has been active in economic and community development of the hanson islands for a long part of her career and she is very confident that the transition to net zero carbon for scotland will offer exciting uh prospects and uh she believes scotland is well placed to punch well above its weight in that in that activity then we have uh rachel rachel shut smith who is the marine special planning manager at north atlantic fisheries uh center at uh in shetland um rachel has extensive experience in policy development marine licensing and data assessment and mapping and so on and rachel manages the development of this shetland islands marine spatial plan which is highly regarded and is thought of as being one of the most advanced marine spatial plans in europe and then last but not least uh we'll finish off with you and scott who is on this particular occasion representing barrow and that is a community limited he is a bit of a polymath has been involved in many activities around conservation biology but also renewable energy and infrastructure projects he is has been part of the community company since 2007 and currently a big project that he's involved managing is in the pilot seaweed form and the technology economic options um surrounding that so i think you'll agree we've got a a fine uh range of of of uh speakers um so what i want to do really is i just give a couple of minutes uh introduction and i'd like to like to start by by reading you the world bank definition this was written in 2017 the world bank definition of the blue economy and it's got four elements and shall which i'll pick up on in a minute so there's the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth improved livelihoods and jobs while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem now what i want to do is just pick up just one or two salient points from each of those four elements so the use of resources the economic growth livelihood and jobs and preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem now most people i would would venture to suggest is when you start thinking about the blue economy start thinking immediately about what ocean resources there are that can be exploited sustainably or not now i personally believe that that's a mistake i think we should should when we're thinking of the blue economy actually start with the last of those four elements and that is think about the preservation of the health of the ocean ecosystem because that is the natural capital that everything else will depend upon and unless we've got that right then there won't be a blue economy and so i think that's where we start i think the ocean systems at the moment are really very badly out of balance so the natural capital upon which all the blue economy sits is out of balance and one of the things that we all have to do collectively is to try and bring that back in balance and i think this is where uh uh i working with hans anders enterprise can actually make a difference we think of the natural resources then for a second we're blessed with an enormous set of resources and we'll hear and we'll hear a lot about that something like 61 percent of the coastline of scotland uh actually resides in our region in the highlands and islands region and we also are very blessed with a a very very strong technical infrastructure already within our region and so we do have the combination of the natural land and built resources we have got a very good starting point we think about the economy and the growth of that economy it's already very high so in the blue economy in europe roughly speaking about 25 000 uh pounds uk pounds um per head of population per annum is linked with the blue economy whereas in scotland we're already up at about about a hundred thousand pounds uh per head per annum of in the blue economy and that of course is is easily set to rise fisheries um roughly speaking about fifty thousand pounds per head um for the wider uk whereas in scotland that is between 75 and 100 000 pounds per head so already um you know we're we're as a as a country and as a people and we're well ahead there and tourism is is worth about half a billion pounds to to the scottish um scottish economy in terms of growth sort of the very conservative growth estimates are that aquaculture is likely to experience at least a seven to ten percent growth but maybe that's a bit conservative possibly um between now and 2030 and the renewables considerably more than that perhaps 17 to 20 percent growth if we then think about the jobs and livelihoods section in this definition um already something alike about eight percent of all of the jobs within the highlands and ireland's region can be linked to the blue economy a very significant amount and the projections are that those that number that percentage is likely to increase to at least 12 by the year 2030 and just to think in terms of numbers aquaculture alone supports about 2 000 jobs as of as a as of now and then finally i think the the really big prize for the blue economy for our region actually is in marine biotechnology there is already uh the start of a of a marine biotechnology in industry but it could it's set to to grow if we do if we if we work together on this i think it could become an enormous multi-stranded industry perhaps dwarfing all of these other activities that i've already mentioned um at the moment we still oil and gas is still the biggest sector for us but that's as we know that is going to decline and i personally believe that we could could be seeing the marine biotechnology sector actually replacing the oil and gas in industry and i think we can we need uhi and hannah's annual enterprise actually to be working together to make this happen the university will be there doing cutting-edge research fundamental biology fundamental chemistry novel chemical processing and molecular biology and so on but that has to be that has to sit within a well-resourced set of facilities and that is where the huns and honours enterprise can fit in so i think collectively we need to work together there and i think we could create something really outstanding so i think that's all i want to say at at this point and i'll hand over to um to ben in a moment and so ben if you want to go ahead thanks nick thanks for the introduction um i think i've just scratched off several things i was going to say about the blue economy that's absolutely fine um and uh i'll just move on to the first slide and uh i wanted to to just to introduce um a little bit about the work that's going on in uhi that relates to the blue economy and i guess the first thing uh i guess we're going to hear more about um aspects of the blue economy as it relates to scotland and particularly the highlands and islands um and i mean it's it's hugely important in terms of the majority of the uk agriculture sector is is relevant to the highlands alliance or based in in the region uh a vast amount of europe's wind and wave resources is is available uh uh will be available around the hinds and islands um and there are a big diversity of different uh sizes and types of communities and activities that go on and i guess it's really important to say that the uhi is an unusual university we're not we're not in some ivory tower campus um somewhere isolated uhi is very much spread across the region and is part of many communities relevant to blue economy activities and and the sectors and uh i guess a picture of my wellies there uh to the point if we're a university with our wellies on we are awake aware of the local opportunities we're aware of the local challenges and uh very much involved in on the ground type issues one thing to say about the spread if you go from the furthermost campus in argyll up to the northernmost campus up in in shetland that covers a range for those from the central belt or from england that range goes from about glasgow to about kent so the footprint of the the uh is is geographically enormous and very relevant to uh the activities we're about to hear about so it's university with wellies on i'm just going to very briefly talk about three uh areas of activity across the university can't talk about all of them obviously but i'm just going to give you three highlights um first one about agriculture and the role of social science second one two examples of marine tourism focusing on the on the local ie scottish and then uh translation out to wider wider interests globally and the third one is is about the educational aspects of awana educational aspect going on in the university just now on renewables in terms of aquaculture there are a variety of sectors from finfish aquaculture through to shellfish and seaweed which we're going to hear more about and these these sectors have very broad economic opportunities and activities that they provide they also meet through to national goals and aspirations and also international significant global challenges in terms of feeding world populations dealing with climate change um dealing with uh depopulation biodiversity loss and so on and so so uh there's a on the ground uh growth of these sectors but also national drivers for their their development and growth and i will be hearing more about that um but at uh there's a considerable stream of work growing on the on how do the on the social science side of of um these interactions in the sense that how do these broader sectors translate down to uh local on the ground initiatives and communities and so on and how do they interact and how can they be done in such a way that that communities can be sustainable the activities are relevant to local people but also deliver on these broader national international objectives and so through a series of projects uh international projects european level to national projects and down to the ones relevant to local councils and so on there's been a number of projects looking at how do local people um see different developments being brought forward and then to understand where the areas of conflict are so that they can be brought through and developed in the most sustainable ways so there's a series of social science projects ongoing to do these activities moving on to uh tourism i'm just going to talk about two projects uh first one's uh ongoing project at the moment called uh the coast that shaped the world it's a joint funded by nature scott which was snh before and uh match funded by calmac and the idea is to try and um broaden out our perspectives of of the sea in a scottish context and that's being done through a partnership between uhi and uh 20 destination management organizations to capture stories about the sea and they've managed to capture 400 narratives um marine stories and and understandings to develop um uh to take those taylor stories and then develop them into uh uh innovative digital and uh physical way uh physical exhibitions and apps and so on so that to understand more about how people see the sea to broaden out uh tourism to bring people to um so diversify the the normal stories that are told about scotland and um uh expose people to areas of scotland they might not normally experience and this is an ongoing project that's going on to december 2022 which will link into the year of scottish stories and the second aspect of tourism is uh some work going on led by led by researchers donna hemland and others at uhi but relevant to the south pacific uh specifically looking at uh focusing on vanuatu at the moment but it's looking at to try and improve the the value of tourism to increase the quality of um tourist presentations and activities to tourists coming into these countries by upskilling the local communities um and we're using uhi uh is very good at um online learning so using those skills there to provide online content to teach local tour guides to improve their the product of what they're providing done so in a way that's sensitive to government and tribal tribal government ways of doing things and delivered in a a relevant language is llama um and this is a a project that's aimed to really improve the the quality of the the presentations a career progress route job opportunities to provide for small medium enterprises delivering future tourism training and to produce internationally recognized qualifications to improve the rate of pay for those developing it and benefiting families and communities and the third area is going to talk about is in relation to renewables and education the university is providing um as i said at the beginning we're university with our welly boots on we have a large number of researchers across the piece um with expertise in the resources relevant to marine renewables the environment and various tools like robotics and so on and we also supervise uh phd students so to marry these two areas of expertise together we run several programs one of them i'm sorry about all the logos on this my animation doesn't work in webex unfortunately but um we have a a doctoral training program running at the moment it's an interreg project uh joining together skills from the west of scotland to northern ireland and the republic and uh run through queens university ulster university letter kenny institute technology and uhi and have brought together a series of companies to generate industry relevant projects for phd students and so we've got at uhi level we've got 10 students currently studying phds relevant to marine renewables in the sector and i've only got a few minutes so i won't talk about all of these but if you want more details about those students and what they're doing go to thebrydencenter.com they're listed there and we're currently looking to spin up a second one of these uh bride and center type phd programs so if people are interested then contact me and that's me uh there's some hissing names to thank for putting these slides together and they'll pass back to nick that's great thank you very much ben um so i will go straight on to amanda brian now or amanda it's um it's all yours um as it says there my name's uh and brian and i have the great pleasure to cheer the board of crown estate scotland and for those of you that aren't familiar crown state scotland is a relatively new public corporation um and we manage the scottish crown state assets on behalf of scottish ministers and the map there demonstrates the range of assets that we're responsible for it includes um some marine assets and some non-marine assets there are four large rural estates uh the rights to river salmon fishing and gold and silver naturally occurring gold and silver across much of scotland about fifty percent of the foreshore and and that includes 5800 moorings and some ports and harbors and we're also responsible for virtually all of the seabed out to 12 nautical miles um and uh and at the moment there's something like 750 fish farming sites and a wide range of cables and pipelines we also um have the the rights um out to 200 nautical miles um over at leasing for offshore renewable energy and gas and carbon storage so we don't actually do oil and gas that's been retained by westminster but but everything else out to 200 nautical miles and then we have a small uh small element of urban property some some retail and office space in george street in edinburgh so so you can see it's a very very a broad portfolio but it is very much dominated by our marine and coastal uh marine and coastal assets and in terms of of what we do with that um we took over managing these assets from the crown estate and for those of you that were familiar with the crown estate the focus that the crown state had was very much on uh deriving revenue from the assets and and increasing the capital value of those assets we have a much broader uh remit and uh well growing uh revenue and returning that to uh to the scottish uh consolidated fund for for onward dispersal uh through the local authorities and on to communities um well that's still important we also look to manage the assets very proactively in order to deliver um local economic benefits and social benefits and environmental benefits as well so we're looking at how do we derive wider value from these assets it's not just about it's not just about the income and the capital value and we do that very much to working in in partnership you'll hear later from um from uh you know from from the likes of of of ewan and and michael who um will both be tenants um of of uh of the scottish crown state and and really much of what goes on on these assets isn't delivered by us but it's but delivered by by tenants and by uh by other uh partners communities local authorities and others so um so we take a very sort of proactive and enabling approach to our our management and it is very much about how we can uh we can work with others and enable enable our partners and our tenants and to to derive um further value from from these assets just some headline figures uh for you um in you know over the last uh three years we have delivered something in the region of 32.4 million pounds into the scottish consolidated fund so that's uh roughly in the region of sort of 11 uh 11 million pounds a year that we're in terms of net revenue that we're returning and that will is is due to to increase substantially as we see more income coming in from uh from offshore wind in particular um but we are also um we also and sort of elements of that asset and there's also elements of capital income that we generate so in in the current corporate plan we will be investing 70 million pounds in a range of uh in a range of initiatives again to to try and uh work with partners to deliver more value from from these assets and a lot of that investment will be in in in the coastal areas particularly around ports and forts and harbors so in terms of what we are doing to build um our role in relation to building blue economy um um there's uh an indication there our first objective in our corporate plan is is very much focused on the blue economy because we recognize the importance of the assets that we manage there and you'll see that there's a very broad range of activities many of the speakers that will follow on from me will focus in on on just one of these areas but as uh as an organization we're active across them all in one way or another and i'm just going to take you an official stop tour of these uh of these different uh of these different areas and so first of all in terms of offshore uh renewables obviously that covers um a wide range but focusing on offshore wind because that's very much um our priority at the moment uh we have a a live round um uh seabed uh seabed leasing at round four offshore wind which is called scotland um it's uh due to close in mid july and we'll be looking to identify the uh the successful um you know bidders i think towards the end of this year start of of next year so we'll get a sense of um of who will be uh taking forward those developments so we're taking a very much a plan based approach so we're working in partnership with marine scotland who have developed a special marine spatial plan for offshore wind and the intention is is that by taking a plan based approach it will actually help to speed up uh the consenting uh process because the plan has already been consulted on and the area is identified so um there is the potential to deliver an additional 11 gigawatts of capacity through uh through this first phase of scotland and this current round is just you know the first of what we envisage uh will be a series of of leasing rounds and we're already moving to look at um what we're calling intog which is essentially the the north sea uh transition uh for for oil and gas so how how we can utilize the infrastructure the oil and gas infrastructure and work with uh the oil and gas companies to um to transition and make maximize the use of those those assets um for um you know for for renewable um really important uh to emphasize that um our approach to offshore wind leasing is designed uh to help uh deliver not just the the increase in in in in renewable energy but it's also about supporting that just transition and encouraging job creation at different stage of uh of these projects and the big emphasis we've put in scotland is on on a development of supply chain and we're requiring all developers to to um to give a supply chain development statement as part of their bid bid process and linked very closely to um to offshore renewables um is is ports and harbours um and uh portsmouth harbours are absolutely um a key part of um of helping to deliver um or maximizing and enabling the full potential of offshore wind in in scotland and and what we're looking at at the moment is how we can work with those responsible for managing airports and harbors to invest to make sure that we have the right facilities um in order to to deliver um a you know successful rollout of um of offshore wind so we we recently commissioned um a piece of work looking at um what's going to be required uh in terms of investment um in in ports and harbours and we're now um leasing with a number of people about how we can work with them to to make that investment and make sure that the infrastructure is fit for purpose when it when it's needed and and we can see you know the benefits to some um you know some of our uh perhaps more fragile rural communities and through what's already happened so for example if you look at if you look at wick harbor and some of the developments there in terms of uh o m support for for the beatrice when uh wind farm i mean it's been the absolute transformation of what's happened around wick harbour and and it's great to see that and that's actually something that's very close to my heart because i grew up in wick so so to see you know harbor that had gone through this sort of decline in fishing and industry but to see it coming back to life through offshore wind is is absolutely fantastic another area that we've been looking at is is energy systems and again we recently um undertook a study looking at um at what energy systems might be able to deliver uh drawing very much on the experience of the surf and turf project which is located in in orkney and for those of you that aren't familiar with that and that project produces hydrogen and using a fairly curtailed onshore wind um and tidal power from the island of ede and then the hydrogen that is transported to kirkwall harbor where it's used to generate electricity and heat for the ferry's birth there and and for that for the harbor building so when you don't have a grid connection it's it's how can we make sure that we utilize um the resources in a way that makes sense locally so we're we're starting to see um other um activities of that kind of nature coming forward so for example we've and we've been working with uh with nova um and and there's developing a proposal um working with the communities on the isla and really looking at how the tidal resource there can produce a clean green power and linking in with the with the pesky in industry there so so these are just a couple of examples but i think there's really significant potential for these kind of uh initiatives in our uh in our sort of more far-flung communities and for for smaller perhaps a closer to shore project so it's not just all about the big wind farms but it's about um about other um sort of marine uh energy systems closer to shore so so we're uh we're working really at the cutting edge and of of that side of things another area where we're heavily involved they've already indicated that the scale of the of um the aquaculture sector emphasis at the moment very much on on finfish which we're looking to sustain and grow um over time working with the sector and looking at again at new technologies and and ways of deploying uh those technologies and shellfish sector significantly smaller but really really important in in particular areas um you know when you look at shetland and the muscle production in shetland absolutely key to that uh local economy so it's how again can we sustain and help grow um those um those sectors um but i think that the real potential for the future is is very much a seaweed cultivation of seaweed farming and and it's great to see the work that you know sam's have been doing and and some of the the developments at the european marine science park there at don stafford um which has been developed by hie so so again it's how do we work with the likes of uhi and and hi and and make sure that we are making the assets that we're responsible for managing available in such a way that it it helps to promote and grow particularly these new sectors and going forward um almost through but um not to forget uh marine tourism um i think we probably have um you know between the number of moorings are absolutely phenomenal and then of course you've got uh pontoons and and marinas and again it's it's you know certainly pre-covered it's seen as being one of the you know the the major sort of you know growth areas and and hopefully over time that will be able to to er to pick up again and we again very much recognize the potential of uh of the sector and and its importance for um you know again for our coastal communities we're just about to launch a post a boat based tourism challenge fund where we will be looking to co-invest with uh with communities and others in some of the infrastructure required to to support boat-based tourism and and we've had a sustainable communities fund running which again has has seen a number of um projects being developed in that area and we also manage a number uh a number of other assets of scottish crown estate assets uh which link into this and one example of that would be the harbour at port gordon and we've actually just entered into a memorandum of agreement with the community a community newly formed a community trust in port gordon um with the intention that they will actually take on ownership um of port gordon harbour because they have a real vision for how they can use the harbour to to drive and development and regeneration of that community really so it's great that we've been able to work with them um on that so okay amanda amanda can i encourage you to start winding up this is my last but this is my last slide so um so just to finish off it's just to say that it is really important that we take a partnership approach and that we um we work with others um and uh scottish government are in the process of developing a blue economy action plan and um and that's very much going to be focusing on where by working together we can actually add value and deliver the most um from um from our i guess marine and coastal natural uh natural assets so and so we're working alongside scottish government and on that approach to to really look at how we can take a targeted approach to funding and investment and to derive a value and for um for scotland as a whole so that's where i was going to leave it and i'll hopefully take questions later so thanks very much nick thank you amanda that's great super thank you um so i think we'll move straight on to um to michael if you're ready michael and we'll hear about these um shellfish that we just heard about from amanda thanks nick if you could just confirm before i launch can you hear me okay nick i can hear you fine yeah okay that's what was good now right um just make sure i can work these slides well thanks for the introduction earlier on nick and thanks for the chance to come and talk a little bit about shellfish aquaculture um i'm going to talk today on how shellfish aquaculture plans to grow as part of the blue economy i want to summarise the benefits of this form of aquaculture and then mention some of the challenges we face and grow in our industry and then as an example of an academic industry collaboration i will tell you about a new project i've been having to develop called shell evolution which will see the uhi take a lead role alongside industry and other stakeholders to deliver a 10-year program of r d to help us build our knowledge-based economy and secure the next tranche of growth for our sector i've been involved in helping to grow the blue economy for most of my career i just didn't realize that this specifically was what i was doing but when you consider aquaculture and shellfish aquaculture specifically within the overall blue economy it sea seems that we have some very worthwhile benefits to offer as we face climate change and the post code recovery challenge we all need to understand how we'll our path in investing in the right place of development but not only grow the economy but will offer more to society in terms of environmental and social impacts i want to highlight how muscle farming as a form of shellfish aquaculture has a powerful role to play in this future the shellfish farming sector has been established for over three decades in scotland and currently grows around seven and a half thousand tons of mussels a year and in addition to that four and a half million oysters this brings in over 30 million pounds every year through the sales of our products to our customers the sector has built a reputation for high quality and environmentally friendly food production which is well received by the consumer and is endorsed by the marine stewardship council the sector products are stocked in nearly all uk retailers as well as more secret wholesalers and many food service outlets we currently employ 193 full-time equivalent employees and also directly support over 150 processing jobs in the central belt of scotland and we have a key primary role in the aquaculture supply chain as well this slide shows you where the muscle and oyster farms are and gives an indication of where these jobs are located basically in many of the rural areas where alternative employment is hard to find so next let me tell you a little bit about our unique benefits shellfish farming is an extractive form of aquaculture with shellfish filter feeding on plankton that are naturally occurring in the sea a byproduct to grow on this biomass in the ocean is that the shellfish help regulate and purify the water by removing nutrients shellfish are a low carbon food helped in part by the fact shellfish capture carbon dioxide in the shells and tissues whilst the farms provide multiple ecological services including biodiversity with the formation of natural reef habitats that can serve a shelter and breeding grounds for juvenile fish this is all achieved whilst growing a healthy nutritious food that has many health benefits that have to get elsewhere such as essential fatty acids and vitamin b12 muscle farming takes place in the sea locks and boils around scotland's coast and requires farms to provide rope for the mussels to settle and grow upon farmers regularly assess the stocks and undertake various husbandry tasks such as grading thinning receding and the management of predators and falling and mussels are typically harvested if they chew after sorry two to three years of growth and mostly sold within the uk with the added benefit there of low food miles so shellfish farmers has quite a positive story to tell and through the development of the scottish aquaculture vision 2030 which forms part of the scotland food and drink strategy the mussel farming sector considers that on existing sites alone with the average current shetland performance per site that the sector has the potential to grow around 18 000 tons by 2037 quite a long horizon which would see the annual turnover increase from the current 30 million to 90 million it's worth noting that after a decade in the 2000s where mussels specifically enjoyed nine percent per annum growth moving into the 2010s in the 2020 up to 2020 we have seen volumes become more stable and i've had many farmers reporting that increased like they're important increasing levels of difficulty in growing consistent volumes so what's happening on our farms that is leading the volumes to be so radical over the last decade and how can we get these issues resolved and return to growth to answer this the industry recognized it needs a scientific foundation to create the conditions for growth back in late 2018 greg arthur from the nefc open shetland and elaine jameson from the hounds niles enterprise and myself sat down to consider if there was a way to help unlock the full potential of the sector through a collaboration between industry and academia we were able to secure some modest funding from the uhi aquaculture industry engagement fund to complete an industry survey which extensively explored the farm and production issues the majority of farming productions responded and we then took the results and distilled these down into three main themes these three themes then became the backbone of the shell volution project proposal an industry laid 6.6 million

10-year initiative to allow the industry to reach its full potential three themes breakdown is shown in this slide team one will investigate and develop a feasible industry-wide model for improving the security and reliability of spat recruitment every farm needs enough juveniles to grow or they don't have a business and so spat is a critical industry input and solving this difficult issue would lead to many improvements in on-farm efficiencies shell volution theme 2 relates to the farm and the environment shellfish farmers want to ensure their production capacity is appropriate and their stock is being grown optimally and in the correct places farmers are mindful of minimizing their ecological impact leaving enough plankton for other filter failures thus theme 2 will look to test predictive growth models and assess current production capacities shell pollution team 3 is all about developing industry best practice and will involve relevant academic disciplines with industry collaboration to measure analyze establish and disseminate best practice in an objective way achieving the best family results in each area this theme has looked into equivalence in the agricultural sector where agronomists provide expertise and advise and advice eye on crop management and implementation there's a raft of detail behind each of these themes but i just wanted to give you a flavor in my brief eight-minute slot so then we basically had the basic project outlined and we needed to figure out how to fund it it was around this time that local authorities were looking for submissions that might include be included in the islands dale which is the last of scotland city dales and these projects had to help transform the economic outlook of the islands we felt this would fit the criteria and we submitted this project is a slightly unusual but valuable way in which we could help the industry strengthen its foundations and get back to growth the project now has initial approval ahead of times have been signed between the local authorities and the government and we've completed a comprehensive strategic outline case and we now need to do the outline and full business cases but we hope that this will go well and should see the project starting in 2022 i want to stress that we will be looking to involve a white group of stakeholders and experts in this project and we have adopted a customized governance structure here to keep the industry needs and requirements at the center of the process but we want to use the skills and expertise within our network both across scotland and beyond we want this to be a project of wide collaboration but at the same time keeping sharp focus on the industry needs to help provide these new jobs for scotland and lastly i hope that in 10 years we will have a curtain age level of knowledge in the industry that we will be able to see the integration of new scientific processes in our industry that will help us to be more resilient more valuable offer more good quality jobs and provide more ecological benefits than we do today if this is the outcome then i think this will be a great project for the sector or local communities and wider society as well and at that nick i'll hand back to you thank you very much uh mikey we lost the last few seconds you you froze there but uh other than that it was absolutely fine don't worry it was it was literally just a few seconds that's super thank you very much that was great um and uh let's move on then so um now on um audrey audrey mciver please you it's all yours good afternoon thank you for that um and it's delighted to be part of the uhi partnership 10th anniversary celebrations um as director of energy and low carbon at high have the pleasure of leading our efforts to secure sustainable economic development from the energy transition across our beautiful and brilliant region i started my time i just as the uhi project was established and i've watched with interest as it has developed over the decades and with many of our partner institutions playing an important role in the key areas of the economy and i guess none more so than in the blue economy today i'm going to cover marine renewables or offshore renewable energy more broadly and without with a focus on offshore wind wave and tidal energy so why are we committed to marine energy if we look at the drivers of change for the region economy over the decades since the establishment of hidb we note that the local government reform north sea oil and gas exploration upgrades to transport and telecom infrastructure have all underpinned population and economic growth we believe that marine or offshore renewables has the potential to be a notable driver of economic growth for the region it is a strong fit with high purpose and stimulating sustainable economic growth and the natural resources surrounding our extensive coastline provide us with distinct regional competitive advantage all the ingredients exist for a successful marine energy sector including the experienced supply chain unique report and portside infrastructure and indeed academic excellence and with the hugely um ambitious entirely necessary net zero by 2045 target offshore renewable energy will absolutely be critical to to the success so in terms of um energy developments across the the region and i guess the real value that we see from offshore energy is that the benefits are spread right across our region the slide here shows examples of energy developments from shetland to argyle and from the outer hebrides to murray and specific to offshore renewables we have nova innovation in shetland we have emek in orkney we have simoc atlantis with the me generally keith ness the sternway deepwater port development and the actor hepatis kishorn port and drydock and westeros nova innovations proposals around isla that demanded mentioned and then these offshore wind manufacturing marshalling construction in the in our marine fourth area as examples if we look at auction when first of all then um the industry has come a long way since the beatrice demonstrators in the inner murray first and that's the top left picture built in 2007. there's a two characters and a total capacity of 10 megawatts it was designed to examine the feasibility of building a commercial wind farm in deep water at a reasonable distance from shore and indeed it paved the way for the beaches offshore wind project which is now fully operational including 84 turbines and providing power for up to 450 000 homes and as demanded also reference the o m base at wic which has been transformational for that local area there and in scotland significantly more offshore wind is under construction foreign planning the latest leasing round the amanda referred to scotland includes further 15 potential sites and scope for up to 11 gigawatts offshore wind power sector has made incredible progress in terms of cost reduction and achieved through innovation learning by doing an affordable finance recognized however in plain ceiling um particularly in terms of extent to which our economies and communities have benefited there's been many challenges and reasons for this and i will not go into those just now but going forward scottish offshore wind energy council usually led by minister wheelhouse involving industry academia and public sector alongside the offshore wind clusters of which deep wind is won and supported by high and uhi as a member of they're focused on closer engagement with the industry the supply chain and really focus on driving up that local content and getting better and securing greater investment in our region the slide here illustrates the extent which offshore wind developer engagement is underway through deep wind and working high working with colleagues across the enterprise agencies and sdi the deepwind cluster now has over 560 members drawn from industry public sector and academia i think chemistry's real commitment to achieving a successful delivery of these really ambitious offshore wind projects but also in ensuring that local economies local communities benefit from doing so and as the industry progresses we anticipate an increase in floating wind and that basically has projects entered deeper waters the current fixed bottom solutions for foundations are not likely to be feasible and we believe that this shift will be significant in terms of the local supply chain opening up opportunities for new entrants and playing into many of our businesses strengths in the region uhi is already alert to this in the terms of skills and r d opportunities and engaging with opportunity comedy first consortia and plans for the powerhouse at allness we are also exploring how floating wind may support aquaculture sector and as the north sea oil and gas sector commits to net zero basin by 35 floating wind and offshore renewable integration more generally is being explored and then lastly on offshore wind the eu and scottish government commitments and indeed global commitments or to hydrogen as a key response to addressing climate change potentially offers a whole new route to market for offshore wind and the production storage distribution and use of hydrogen will also create significant opportunities for a blue economy so moving on to more specifically on energy i guess fair to say that the progress there has not been at the same pace as offshore wind but i think really worth hanging on to is the economic and opportunity that the marine sector offers and relatively recent work by the university of edinburgh and energy systems catapult with support from wave energy scotland concluded that over 100 billion pounds of net economic benefits in over a 20-year period and could be generated from weight and tidal energy so i strongly believe it's the pride that we continue to pursue since emec's opening of billiard crew wave site in 2004 and the fall of warren's title site in 2007 um as i said progress by the sector has not perhaps been slower than that achieved by offshore wind but there have been steady progress more recently in terms of wave albeit still at the technology development stage and following the establishment of wave energy scotland in 2014 at the subsidiary of high we've now been involved in working with 200 organizations from 13 different countries supporting 95 innovation projects and investing over 42 million pounds this has been leading to two scale devices shown here in the the tweets that i've extracted two scale devices aws ocean energy and motion energy due to undertake realty testing in the summit at emac in terms of time gain progress has been perhaps a bit faster there and what we've seen first arrays of tidal stream devices installed by simoc atlantis and the penta firth and nova innovation in shetland we've seen more than 10 gigawatt hours of tidal energy being delivered to the gp grid and we've also seen second generation devices orbital marine device and had generated over three gigawatts in a single year the slide here shows recent tweets from orbital marine nova innovation and cynic atlantis illustrating that next generation device development and the fabrication activity of that in scotland they're illustrating integrating tidal power with ev infrastructure and also illustrating how already we are exporting the expertise um on tidal that's from cylic atlantis where their device been deployed in japan so all these developments are building scottish capability and expertise in the supply chain and really the challenge and the opportunity now is for how we support the commercialization of the sector and securing that in indigenous capability and growing the supply chain promise and in terms of um the i guess plus illustrated some of the potential around the economic potential for for wave and tidal i think it's always worth highlighting that the testing demonstration in itself generates economic value and we've witnessed that here in the highlands and islands the knowledge the ip and the early stage engagement with the supply chain also provides a real solid foundation to grow the sector recent work and i'll if you should caveat this that this is not published yet but i thought i would just include it it's just to show the the ways activities have shown a net value add of 53 and a half million to the uk economy and 241 jobs whilst the cumulative impact of emec since between 2003 and 2017 is estimated at 284 200 or 285 million and over 420 jobs i really just wanted to highlight that that you know there the economic view from um the test and demonstration stage in these important sectors so in concluding um i think it's fair to say that offshore wind wave and tidal energy have progressed over the last decade albeit at differing rates the learning is constant whether that be in technology design deployment at sea or supplying to development and i think it's clear to see that the scale of opportunity continues to grow and the highlands and islands arguably have the potential to become the uk's epicenter of offshore renewable energy we do have a lot to do though we need to continue to seek supportive market and regulatory environment particularly in terms of the commercialization of weaving title we need to address the barriers to greater supply chain content and greater benefits to our economies that there's a huge amount of work underway in that space we need to look at alternative routes to market and to collaborate collaborate and collaborate more to deliver the research and development the innovation and the commercialization required to ensure that these sectors really are the drivers of positive change for the highlands and islands thank you thank you very much audrey that was uh that was super thank you very much um i'm sure there'll be some questions about about i that now move on to uh rachel rachel smith about uh marine spatial planning all yours uh rachel thank you i'm rachel shaksmith i'm responsible for delivering marine spatial planning in scotland and that includes the development of both her local marine plan here as well as participating in research uh efforts more globally and i'm going to be specifically talking about uh the roman regional marine planning can have an engaging communities in uh marine management so some of you uh may be aware in scotland we have a national marine plan and marine planning seeks to protect the marine environment with the aim of providing sustainable economic development and also opportunities for our scottish communities to enjoy a the marine assets that we have uh for both for recreation and as well as employment now across scotland uh the scottish government decided that it would be important to have a a series of more localized regional marine plans and there are 11 proposed for scotland although only shetland and clyde um were initially chosen to progress this new form of marine planning and has just started the process so uh the purpose of regional marine planning and obviously in scotland the blue economy is highly important to us but all of our different regions in scotland have different aspects of the marine environment and marine economies so regional marine planning looks to protect elements of the marine environment and look at opportunities for economic uh sustainable economic growth and community empowerment so we've tried to include communities both within the inception of the marine plan in shetland but also during the plan's development and as we move to the next phase the planned implantation and it provides regional marine planning provides us opportunities for community communities to shape the future direction of their marine space and in a sustainable way and this includes things like identifying localized problems which will be different within each region and scotland wouldn't be as easy or appropriate to dress nationally and find localized solutions which might be specific to that marine area and marine planning is is a both a policy framework but it also requires um data and that's one of the things that organizations like the uhi can contribute to on a national level but also has been alluded to we have this ability to and provide much more in-depth data a more localized style across scale across the highlands because we have these campuses uh such broad array of campuses and now in terms of governance in marine planning and there's the opportunity for community group membership uh within a marine planning partnership or within an advisory group in shetland the legal responsibility of marine planning sits within the nefc and also shetlands island council and we have community representation uh one of the important elements of this in shetland has been the inclusion of fisheries which are one of our key industries and when we first started the process of marine planning we realized that there was both an absence of policy sphere but also an absence of data to help protect this particularly important industry and whilst fishing is important across scotland it is particularly important in shetland and by working on trust with to establish trust with the local fishing sector we were able to um engage with them to map their important fishing grounds uh using both a charts and asking them where they fished but also the use of technology and as you can see that's allowed us to reveal patterns of use and that shows where fishing activity intensity happens but also where there's opportunity for other sectors to grow and one of the things that we've been able to achieve by working closely with the sector is this trust and that's meant that they've not only provided us with the data which they're initially reluctant to do but they and we can also discuss with them the scale of data they want to release in a document like this however we do have more detailed data that they're also happy or will provide to developers at more localized scale and and by giving fishers the opportunity to work at both of these levels it's meant that they're being more willing to provide data which then in turn allows them to protect this important livelihood to rural communities the other component that's important to um in management is understanding what the components of the marine environment in terms of its biology and we've been working with communities to enable them to provide information and understanding of the marine environment where they live so we've mapped community sightings of uh cetaceans and and we've also worked with fishermen to looking at historical records of uh important seabed habitats enable them to uh assess whether i think that his this historical data is correct or not and one of the things we found of course is the fishermen who are out there every day can tell us that many of these historical records weren't accurate for a range of reasons of course data from the 1980s wasn't collected using uh the gis that we a gps that we have now and a lot of these points either plotted on land and the fishermen were able to tell us more accurately where these habitats occurred and the nefc was then able to go and survey them and this has allowed us to be the local and fishering fleet to gain msc accreditation as they've worked with us to protect these important habitats marine planning uh provides the opportunity for communities to gain economic advantage we've also worked with local communities to um map areas that are important to them in terms of recreation so we've mapped important areas for climbing and kayaking and sailing and rowing and scuba diving and we've also worked with communities to develop a greater understanding of what it is about the qualities of the marine environment that they find um particularly important to enjoy these activities and that can now allow developers to plan their developments in a way that's sensitive to the local community for instance with the local finfish aquaculture sector the local communities identified that they wanted all the food barges to be blue and white to match them with the ferries and it was quite a simple measure that the um aquaculture sector to could implement that makes it uh finfish agriculture more acceptable to local communities and the next stage of marine main planning will be uh the implementation phase as i said which scetland and the clyde have been leading the process and we hope to be uh marine planned to be adopted by gov i mean scottish government next month um and during the implementation phase we hope to work more closely with uh sectors like the muscle industry to look at more optimal uses of marine space through projects like the chevrolution effort that michael was talking about earlier thank you that's great thank you very much rachel fascinating stuff yeah that's great okay um thank you so we did now have the last speaker yuan from the bahrain vatican community limited okay do the slides automatically come over you should be able to move them on on the left hand side now okay there we are right thank you very much and just like to say the main focus of my presentation will be about the emerging seaweed sector from a community development perspective but i'd also like to touch on the potential interface between seaweed and renewable energy in the setting of a remote fragile grid so i'll move on i struggled to come up with a title largely because i we're venturing into this area as a community company very tentatively and they're basically testing the water and we're not sure if it's iron pipe and whether we need to do more research or not and the first main photograph on the right is down in coolest and battersea and we do touch on other areas in terms of the blue economy there's a the top left is the uh in castlevania marina and middle left is um the refurbishment of an old herring pier for the battersea fishermen and i put down on the the bottom left that's the community wind turbine which somewhat ironically gets below it is one of the best sites for collecting saudi or alleria escalante one of the seaweed samples we're working with as ben alluded to i get engaging with the community and getting them on board is very important for us and we've got 267 individual members which is quite a high proportion of the adult population on the island the part i'd like to emphasize here is also that i we as a community company are not unique there are community companies throughout the highlands and islands and it's an interesting thing to bear in mind because we have a potential business model here and a while back caledonia seaweed proposed the cluster model for the development of the seaweed sector and this offers potential scale or the potential to scale up the industry to meet the the feedstock requirements of a biorefinery and the other thing i'd like to touch on before i'm considering the present is it's nothing new and seaweed has a long history um throughout the highlands and islands and with historically it was used for sodium potash for glass and bleaching industries and a source of um iodine ironically in the past it's tended to form or follow a boom bust pattern and it's a case of whether there are lessons to learn from what's happened in the past and and avoid and repeating those in the photograph on the left um are the loading bays of the the kelp factory mcneil barra established believe it or not back in 1835. ironically one of the creditors um withdrew their funds right the start and only lasted for a year or so next slide is to try and bring us up to the present place and what's happening in the sector there's been a spat of applications for pre-application consultations followed by license applications followed by the iron licenses being awarded and if you look at in 2020 and we had 11 applications coming through and now a lot of these are actually moving forward to the licenses being submitted and and actually granted to the next slide the other thing that i'd like to highlight in this that i a biorefinery and upscaling are buzzwords in the sector at the moment and there's a lot of ambiguity about what they actually mean and confusion when you talk to different people and as far as i can ascertain i'm there's two different types you've got a cascading extracted biorefinery to valorize components such as polyphenols if you've got guns etc and you've got an alternative energy under materials driven biorefinery and being aware of the distinction between these is useful in terms of assessing um potential feedstock requirements and the next slide is looking at fine the actual feedstock requirements of projected feedstock requirements you've got asian ocean rainforest in the faroe isles um predicting this of 18 to 73 kilotons per annum goa ventures in the netherlands 500 kilotons whereas i'm putting that in context bmi report for ireland projecting five years time that their total production is only going to be 0.9

kilotons or the figures for scotland i don't know i can put it in the context of our proposed pilot farm of one hectare which is 20 times wet weight per annum which would only be enough to provide the feedstock for two days for a biorefinery the other thing that i want to touch on and i'll go back to the previous slide where i can look at the graph and and the other i'm following slide shows it in more detail the one thing that's going to result if you do upscale is you're going to get an offset in the prices as you increase on the volume of production and you're going to see the price drop per unit and that could cause potential on issues with the industry as it currently stands because you've got wild harvesting supplying the on the food sector at the moment if you start upscaling the industry the prices are going to ein fall over time and it's going to be interesting to see what the repercussions of these trends are on the sector as it currently stands this is a similar presentation it just shows that the volume coming in on the bottom right as you're changing the situation so on the left you've got the current european situation on the right hand side the future projected situation when you're you're getting large-scale multi-use farms becoming operational there are a number of challenges um in moving the forward from it's uh emergent state into a more industrial format that can deliver i'm just going to list these in terms of you've got nursery and development you've got the seedling method cultivation system ecological impacts which are pluses and minuses and also considering their ecosystem services there's capacity issues and what the future role is for wild harvesting issues around the harvesting window supply chain considerations market structure outgrowers intermediate buyers and end users come together and what michael was talking about might be a future model for the sector and you've got an opportunity for community development through the cluster model we need new and facilities and infrastructure we've just recently heard that sam's got funding for a seaweed nursery so there is movement in that area and there's a need for a lot of research to be undertaken and moving forward and is being currently undertaken and there are possible linkages with the local energy economy and recently the scottish government published its consultation into the heaton building strategies which sets out a grand vision of transforming more than a million homes and an estimated 500 000 non-domestic buildings to using low and zero carbon emissions the challenge we've got though is that in areas of remote and fragile grid that's going to be difficult to deliver and so you you've got to try and consider how you're going to manage it there might be a biofuel option there might be hydrogen so we touch on lots of different aspects that have been brought up in previous talks and the other issue is that i do can we avoid i we need to aim for good expensive grid reinforcements by pushing local solutions and this is one of the projects that we've recently received funding for which is looking at issues uh in terms from a appraisal um of how we i can for instance even service the plan requirements we've got a proposed processing plan or pre-processing plan on shore that requires three phase supply but we've only got a single-phase supply on the island so this technical techno-economic appraisal encapsulates some of the wider national issues at the local level and from recent talks have been involved in as well when you start talking about electrifying heat and transport you're actually really talking about local solutions so what we're finding from i'm progressing this techno-economic study that we're actually helping to address issues in terms of t

2021-05-01 11:51

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