The plan looks to exploit the USA's recent extended continental shelf claims, which give the country the world’s largest maritime exclusive economic zone
The Harnessing Autonomy for Energy Joint ventures Offshore (HAEJO) programme aims to expand deep-water seaweed cultivation, grow maritime industries, and diversify US energy biomass production sources by partnering with researchers from South Korea, a country with a large seaweed cultivation industry that is limited to serving food markets.
“HAEJO’s offshore seaweed cultivation technologies could unlock new opportunities for the energy sector. They will both reduce the strain on land and freshwater resources and enable a new, domestic, megaton-scale supply source,” said ARPA-E director, Evelyn N Wang, in a press release.
“Leveraging work efforts in this field from around the world gives HAEJO technologies the potential to accelerate US energy independence, and secure US leadership in ocean industry and technology,” he added.
The HAEJO programme will work to overcome challenges in creating an economically viable seaweed industry by developing new sensors for autonomous systems, ocean engineering approaches for supplying nutrients offshore and efficiently dewatering harvested biomass, and market-enabling technologies for deep-water seaweed cultivation. Through HAEJO, projects will involve technical partnerships with South Korean experts in seaweed cultivation to accelerate US industry development.
Technologies are intended to reduce the cost of seaweed cultivation by a factor of four, develop energy-centric seaweed markets in the US, and increase the scale of domestic seaweed cultivation market by at least three orders of magnitude.
