Amazon plans to fund what is described as the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm located between offshore wind turbines.

Seaweed is known to absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide but the extent of its viability for carbon removal at an industrial scale is yet to be determined.

The project known as “North Sea Farm 1” will be located in a wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands.

It has been designed to test and improve methods of seaweed farming while researching seaweed’s potential to sequester carbon.

As part of the €1.5 million (£1.3m) project, funded through Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund, a team of scientists from Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) is seeking to establish the role offshore seaweed farming could play in capturing and storing carbon.

Zak Watts, Director of EU Sustainability at Amazon, said: “Seaweed could be a key tool in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, yet it’s currently farmed at a relatively small scale in Europe.”

Senior Marine and Climate Change Ecologist at PML Dr Ana Queiros who is leading the research said: “The carbon dioxide removal potential of the seaweed industry remains unproven and the challenge is to understand how seaweed can be used for carbon sequestration over the long term.

“There is a lot of interest in the growth of the industry but we need to have the evidence to determine the genuine blue carbon value of these habitats.”

Blue carbon is the carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems.

Article source: https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/02/17/farming-seaweed-between-offshore-wind-turbines-the-amazons-way/