The 4th edition of the "Belgian-Portuguese Routes to the Blue Economy" took place on June 27, in Lisbon. The event is an annual initiative of the Belgian-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce that brings together Belgian and Portuguese companies, researchers and institutions active in the sector and has as its main theme "Pilot Projects and Living Laboratories".
CCBP would like to thank all participants, speakers and moderators as well as the whole team of Morais Leitão for having contributed to make this event a success! Thank you and we hope to count on the presence of all of you for the next edition of the event!
This year's edition, which was part of the official agenda of the United Nations Conference on Oceans taking place in Lisbon, counted with the participation of Rui de Oliveira Neves, from Morais Leitão, Vincent Van Quickenborne, Minister of Justice and the North Sea of Belgium, José Maria Costa, Portugal's Secretary of State of the Sea, Isabel Estrada Carvalhais, Member of the European Parliament, Felix Leinemann, from the European Commission and Rui Faria da Cunha, President of the Belgian-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce.
After the opening session, the programme was divided into three sessions: 1. Energy and Transport, 2. Towards resilient and regenerative solutions for coastal zones, and 3. Biotechnology and Bioproduction.
The first session was moderated by Frederico Ferreira, from Fórum Oceano, and had as speakers António Sarmento, from WAVEC, with the topic "New ideas to capture ocean wind energy in Europe"; Casimir Morobe, founder of Toqua, with the topic " Use of machine learning to reduce fuel consumption in the shipping industry"; Jorge Antunes, from Tecnoveritas, with the topic "Decarbonisation, the Shipping Dilemma"; and Jan Navratil, from Solvay, with the topic "Smart emissions removal: From onshore to offshore solutions".
The second session was moderated by Ann-Katrien Lescrauwaet, Director of International Relations at Flanders Marine Institute and had as speakers Diogo Mendes from HAEDES, Marc Huygens from DEME and Filipe Porteiro from OMA and Okeanos (University of the Azores), who spoke on "Can aquatic vegetation be used to mitigate coastal problems?", "How to scale up nature-based solutions for coastal and estuarine management? A coastal showcase & bankbusters" and "Coastal protection in a complex and highly energetic system: the case of the Azores Islands", respectively.
Finally, the third session was moderated by Gonçalo Carvalho from Sciaena and included Paulo Serra Lopes, from Aquazor, who spoke about "New aquaculture systems in Portugal, the blue path to the future", Helena Abreu, from AlgaPlus, with the theme "Algae, from challenge to opportunity", Bert Groenendaal, from SIOEN, who presented new biodegradable marine ropes under the theme "Application of biodegradable textiles for offshore aquaculture", and Miguel Pardo, from Medeina Engineering, with the theme "Oligochaete worms: a new approach in a dredging and hydraulic engineering context. Trajectory for full-scale applications".
The videorecording of the event can be watched here.
The presentations used during the working session are available for consultation here.
The report "Highlights of the IV Belgian-Portuguese Routes for the Blue Economy" can be found here.
More information can be found on the respective landing page.
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