Summer of engagement for Swansea led EnAlgae project

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With only three months to go to its final close-out conference, the spring and summer have been busy times for engagement for EnAlgae across Europe.

EnAlgae logoThe €14.5 million project is led by from the College’s Department of Biosciences and has partners carrying out a wide range of activities across North West Europe.

In June, the project hosted an international algae symposium as a side event at the prestigious European Biomass Conference and Exhibition in Vienna, which saw 14 talks delivered to over a hundred delegates.

Another symposium was held at Cambridge University highlighting the variety and practical uses of algae from around the world.  Partners in France and The Netherlands have held demonstrations at two of the project’s nine pilot facilities for cultivating algae.  Meanwhile, our colleagues from Belfast, Galway and Pleubian in France were heavily involved in a jointly organized seaweed workshop in Oban. Continuing with the seaweed theme, our partner in Belgium, Flanders Maritime Cluster, organized an industry-facing seminar to discuss best practice for integrating seaweed cultivation with existing aquaculture.  

Back closer to home at this year’s Hay Festival, University staff joined colleagues from Tata Steel in promoting our longstanding collaboration to investigate ways of using microalgae to valorise wastes and capture CO2 from flue gasses. 

The project and Swansea University were also represented at Grand Designs Live, held in London in May where 100,000 visitors would have had the chance to earn about futuristic visions of how algae could be built into the homes of tomorrow!

“It’s a final whirlwind of activity for us at the moment,” said project coordinator Dr Shaun Richardson. “We’ve had a busy summer and now preparations are getting into full swing for the project’s closeout conference, which will be held in Brussels on Tuesday 29th September”. 

“Between now and then we will be finalising our recommendations as to the role algae can play in a more sustainable, circular economy. We will also be launching our two major legacies, the first being an online decision support system that will guide people through the technological and market opportunities.  The second is a pan-European Algal Information Network that will provide advice and guidance to companies and other interested parties at the local level through a series of regional contact centres”.

The EnAlgae project is led by Swansea University and funded by the European Union under the INTERREG IVB North West Europe programme. EnAlgae unites experts and observers from 7 EU member states to determine the potential benefits of algae as a future sustainable energy source. 

Anyone wishing to learn more about the EnAlgae project can visitwww.enalgae.eu.