Fredrik Gröndahl discusses the international engineering project that seeks to turn the ecological problems of the Baltic Sea to economic and social advantage across different sectors

How would you defi ne ecological engineering to anyone not familiar with your fi eld of study?

Ecological engineering emerged in the early 1960s, but its defi nition has taken several decades to refi ne and is still undergoing adjustment. Ecological engineering is designing services that benefi t society so that they also benefi t nature, using a combination of ecological and engineering knowledge.

What is the objective of the ‘Sustainable use of Baltic Sea natural resources based on ecological engineering’ (SUBMARINER) project?

Our aim is to improve the environment of the Baltic Sea, by evaluating potential for ecosystem changes and bio-manipulation. To do this, we take a holistic view of all the problems and benefi ts of using biological substrate from the sea for a range of applications, such as energy production. To do this, we use an interdisciplinary approach.

What are the ecological problems that you are addressing?

The Baltic Sea has problems deriving from increased water temperature from climate change, pollution from organic compounds and metals, and eutrophication from an overload of nutrients. Eutrophication leads to blooms of cyanobacteria and other microalgae as well as the opportunistic red and green macroalgae. A consequence of all this biological material is anoxic conditions in large areas of the Baltic Sea.

Have you developed any interim recommendations?

The Baltic Sea is a brackish water environment with relatively few species, which makes it comparatively easy to interpret the ecological consequences of different bio-manipulation methods.

The harvesting of reed and red algae looks very promising and studies from our research group show that harvesting could not only reduce nutrient loads and thus eutrophication, but also provide relatively good substrata for biogas production.

Farming blue mussels for use in animal feeds is a possibility – there will be a need in future to reduce the use of fi sh in the chicken, pork and salmon farming industries.

An important fi nding is that the uptake of algae may remove more nitrogen and phosphorus than all the Swedish sewage treatment plants put together.

Can you provide a short summary of some of your core activities?

We compile and compare reed and algae harvesting and mussel farming methods used worldwide, adapting them to our conditions and data. In our case studies, we look at a problem such as microalgae blooms or the huge swathes of drifting red fi lamentous macroalgae as a resource and work from there.

We look for innovative uses for harvested

material and its by-products – for example, retrieving nutrients for commercial use, or producing biogas for energy – and then calculate the energy balance.

We evaluate concomitant social perspectives such as new jobs and business opportunities, including tourism, leisure and outdoor living.

Furthermore, we analyse the ecological aspects, focusing on ecosystem applications, for example, as nutrient fi lters in the coastal zones, and consider the effects of harvesting and farming on both ecosystems and biodiversity.

Cost-benefi t analyses will be prepared from information from a variety of sources – interview records, formal papers, stakeholder workshops and round-table discussions. Finally, analyses of the case studies will be synthesised to give an integrated evaluation of the potential of each proposed bio-manipulation method.

How signifi cant is international participation to the project?

It is very important, as we seek to establish best practice. Apart from collaborating with other projects around the Baltic Sea, we also cooperate with partners from China and Scotland.

What will be the major outcomes of the project?

We will compile our scientifi c fi ndings into a compendium for the stakeholders in the Baltic Sea region. We work closely with local governments that are running subsidiary

Out of the blueSU

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34 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

THE CONVENTIONAL COMBUSTION process for generating energy from organic materials is environmentally unfriendly and ineffi cient, and the soaring costs of fossil fuels render it increasingly expensive. This means that alternative energy strategies must be found and the challenge for scientists working with biomass is to produce energy in an economic way without harming the natural environment.

However, green, land-based biomass comes at a price: the costs of planting crops for fuel are high in terms of the land, and then pest control, irrigation and transportation raise the costs further. Usage of land for biomass also contends with other applications, such as food and fodder production, and large areas of monoculture reduce biodiversity, while the use of fertilisers contributes to greenhouse gases. In the EU, millions of hectares are set aside for fuel crops and at present, green biomass contributes about 20 per cent of the EU’s renewable energy production.

Blue biomass – biomass in the aquatic environment – is attracting interest worldwide because of the potential for minimising use of arable or constructible land for biomass. A common and ready source is algae. Alongside its ability to thrive in a variety of environments, algae are comparatively quick to grow, produce high quantities of oils, consume CO2, produce oxygen and are biodegradable. Sea algae generate approximately 40 per cent of the oxygen on earth, and so have a benefi cial effect

on the planet. Yet, if their growth escalates beyond normal patterns, the effects on marine ecosystems can be disastrous. Finding a balance between the environmental, as well as technical, societal and economic costs and benefi ts of exploiting marine biomass is imperative in this context.

THE ECOLOGY OF THE BALTIC SEA

Bordered by nine countries, with nearly 5,000 miles of coastline and covering more than 377,000 square miles, the Baltic Sea is a brackish tract with lower salinity than normal seawater, connecting to the North Sea through a canal and narrow straits between Denmark and Sweden. It handles 15 per cent of the world’s shipping and along its coasts lie more than 500 ports: there are countless communities that rely on the Sea for their livelihood.

The Baltic Sea used to have a large cod population, but it has been and continues to be overfi shed and the ecosystem has changed as a result. The Sea is heavily polluted, not just from shipping and oil spills but also from the runoffs of agriculture – excess nitrate-rich fertilisers and animal wastes – and poorly treated or untreated effl uent from sewage works. As a result of the ensuing eutrophication, the largest of the world’s dead sea zones, and another six of the top ten, are in the Baltic Sea. Climate change also plays a part: in July 2010, an algae bloom roughly the size of Germany covered 234,000 square miles of the Sea. “The

The blooming of blue biomassBlue biomass presents challenges for economic and ecological exploitation. Now, the SUBMARINER project hopes not only to meet them but also, as part of a Baltic-wide programme, to help save the life of the Baltic Sea

The total sum of all benefi ts

connected with the uptake of

algae may turn out to be very

good both from an economical

and ecological perspective

projects, and a number of workshops and information exchanges are planned. When this fi nishes, the results will include decision support for local government policy makers and guidelines for implementation.

The environmental stress of coastal zones around the world from eutrophication and climate change is increasing. There is a clear need for both short- and long-term ecological engineering interventions, and the need will increase in the future, so we hope that the analytical approach that we are using will be constructive for use in future projects – that not only our fi ndings but also our methods and process will be sustainable.

We are turning a problem into a resource that will be used for something positive, such as biogas. And we continually seek to increase the value of biomass harvest, which leads us to extraction of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen. The end result will be a cleaner sea and coastline and therefore improved conditions for fi sh breeding and enhanced biodiversity.

SUBMARINER

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THE SUBMARINER TEAM: from left standing: Joseph Santhi Pechsiri, Nils Brandt and Fredrik Gröndahl; from left sitting: Maria Malmström, Eva Blidberg and Emma Risén.

36 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

INTELLIGENCE

SUBMARINERSUSTAINABLE USES OF BALTIC MARINE RESOURCES BASED ON ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

OBJECTIVES

Through increased understanding and the promotion of innovative, sustainable and new uses of the Baltic Sea, SUBMARINER provides the necessary basis for the region to take a proactive approach to improving the future condition of its marine resources and the economies that depend on them.

PARTNERS

Maritime Institute in Gdańsk; Gdańsk Science and Technology Park, Poland • Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; Norgenta North German Life Science Agency; Kieler Wirkstoff-Zentrum am IFM-GEOMAR; University of Rostock; BioCon Valley Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e. V., Germany • ScanBalt; Lolland Energy Holding, Denmark • Royal Institute of Technology; The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Trelleborg Municipality, Sweden • Tallinn University of Technology; Entrepreneurship Development Centre for Biotechnology & Medicine, Estonia • Klaipeda University Coastal Research & Planning Institute; Klaipeda Science & Technology Park, Lithuania • Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development; Environmental Development Association, Latvia • Finnish Environment Institute, Finland

FUNDING

Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-13

CONTACT

Associate Professor Fredrik GröndahlSwedish Coordinator

Industrial EcologySchool of Industrial Engineering and ManagementKTH – Royal Institute of TechnologyValhallavägen 79, StockholmSweden

T +46 8790 6158E fgro@kth.se

www.submariner-project.eu

www.ima.kth.se

FREDRIK GRÖNDAHL has a background in the fi elds of Oceanography, Chemistry and Marine Biology. Since 1991 he has worked as an Associate Professor at KTH, Stockholm. His research interests concern the nutrient dynamics in the coastal ecosystem and the sustainable development of coastal zones. He also has a special interest in the Polar Regions.

Baltic Sea is actually one of the most polluted sea areas in the world, and for the moment it does not look promising for the future,” warns Dr Fredrik Gröndahl, Associate Professor of Industrial Ecology at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

SUSTAINABLE USE OF BALTIC MARINE RESOURCES

Gröndahl is heavily involved in the ‘Sustainable Use of Baltic Marine Resources’ (SUBMARINER) initiative, an interdisciplinary, international programme of projects running in eight countries that border the Baltic. The participants come from maritime and environmental institutes, universities, regional development agencies, federal environmental ministries, innovation centres and scientifi c and technological organisations. Aiming to decrease the stress on the Baltic Sea while simultaneously enabling the creation of new industries along the coastline, the project seeks to maximise innovation in using marine ecosystems to bolster developments in blue biotechnology and mariculture.

Gröndahl and his team are seeking alternative methods for obtaining energy from marine biomass and also a means of reducing nutrients in the Sea. The overall aim is to establish whether methods of managing the marine biomass in the Baltic can reduce the nutrient load effectively, while also supporting viable biogas production and other industries.

The project aims to ensure that best practice is established across the region, generate new business opportunities and synergistic installations and thus to help build self-sustaining industries and communities. This means that the project investigates sources of fi nancing for the development of biomass and other energy and nutrient take-up initiatives, considers conversion technologies, determines requirements for policy and regulation changes, and proposes means of ensuring adoption by local communities.

SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS

Crucially, solutions stemming from the project must be sustainable and must meet social, ecological, technical and economic requirements, as Gröndahl elaborates: “Solution design should be systems-based, sustainable, and integrate society with its natural environment, by constructing ecosystems such as wetlands, or manipulating disturbed ecosystems in order to improve the status of the ecosystem, such as establishing the cultivation of blue mussels or harvesting algae”.

While securing close links with many international groups, universities and centres of excellence, SUBMARINER prioritises its relationships with SMEs that will benefi t from this research. “We have three specifi c research objectives. The fi rst is to determine the feasibility and potential of ecological engineering and bio-manipulation methods to balance the nutrient fl ows in the entire Baltic Sea and to indicate possible areas for placement of associated facilities,” Gröndahl explains, “while the second is to establish the potential of algae or reed harvesting and mussel farming, and for this we are applying systems analysis to specifi c case studies. Lastly, we will provide the guidelines for ecological engineering facilities within coastal zones”.

THE POTENTIAL OF BLUE BIOMASS

Marine biomass has great potential for use in pharmaceutical products, blue biotechnology products such as enzymes, reeds for building and fuel applications, fertilisers and foodstuffs for both animals and humans. Research in other parts of the world is looking to engineer high fuel yield strains of algae through genetic modifi cation. For the Baltic, ecological concerns are fundamental, but Gröndahl is optimistic that the Baltic strand will deliver: “The total sum of all benefi ts connected with the uptake of algae may turn out to be very good both from an economical and ecological perspective,” he suggests.

© FREDRIK GRÖNDAHLFLOATING MATS OF FILAMENTOUS RED ALGAE ALONG THE SWEDISH SOUTH COAST