Norwegian Test Center for Seaweed Cultivation and Utilization Technologies – RI SEAWEED

The Norwegian Seaweed Centre is a national research infrastructure designed to promote research and facilitate the development of new technologies for the industrial cultivation and use of seaweed. The centre will contribute to the green transition, several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the achievement of the Paris Agreement. Cultivating the ocean is necessary to meet the growing global demand for food, feed, materials, energy, and climate solutions. Norway, with one of the world’s longest coastlines, is well positioned to take a leading role in this development. The Norwegian Seaweed Centre will support this by providing a unique infrastructure for research and innovation across the entire value chain of macroalgae cultivation. The Norwegian Seaweed Centre provides modern equipment for research and innovation in an integrated full-scale technology platform run by interdisciplinary research environments at SINTEF and NTNU in close cooperation with the industrial sector. Its infrastructure consists of onshore and offshore facilities for macroalgae cultivation at coastal and exposed sites and integrated production with salmon in integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA). The offshore facilities and surrounding areas are visualised using mathematical ocean models connected to sensor networks for monitoring environmental conditions, the uptake of nutrients and CO2 and production of macroalgae in the facilities. The centre will establish an automation and robotics laboratory for onshore and offshore facilities, a mobile system for pre-processing, stabilization and storage solutions for harvested raw materials, as well as laboratories for processing, product development and quality assessments.

Great expectations are being linked to the emergence of seaweed cultivation as a new bioeconomy in Norway. RI SEAWEED will address this by creating a world-leading research infrastructure for seaweed science and technology. The infrastructure will be an instrumental contribution to a green shift and future value creation through its support to long-term research. Cultivation of the oceans is a key requirement for future sustainable and efficient utilisation of the ocean resources required to meet demands for food, feed, materials, and energy for a growing global population. Norway, with one of the world's longest coastlines, can take a leading role. Recent work in the RCN-funded Knowledge Platform MACROSEA led by SINTEF suggests that Norway has a massive potential to cultivate a wide variety of seaweeds and develop new bioeconomy. The ongoing RCN-funded Knowledge Platform Norwegian Seaweed Biorefinery Platform headed by NTNU will advance research on processing and product development to unlock this potential. RI SEAWEED will contribute to advance basic and applied seaweed research by providing a holistic value-chain approach offering equipment and interdisciplinary knowledge hubs with top engineers and scientific personnel at SINTEF and NTNU. The infrastructure has drawn great interest from more than 30 potential national and international users of its novel technology to streamline seaweed cultivation and utilization and demonstrate profitable solutions with carbon offset routes. RI SEAWEED will be in line with national and European strategies for marine research and the ambitions of the High-level panel for a sustainable ocean economy, which identifies seaweed cultivation as an opportunity for a new blue bioeconomy that supports sustainable growth and movement towards a low-emissions society. Accordingly, RI SEAWEED will contribute to meet several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the targets set by the Paris Agreement.