Coastal Climate Change - Ports and renewable energies: impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation

“Blue growth” is meant to be the EU long-term strategy to support growth in the maritime sector as a whole. A necessary task to implement such a strategy is the identification of economic, environmental and social challenges affecting the different sectors of maritime economy. Climate change is such a challenge with a wide range of possible impacts on existing, emerging and potential activities such as short-sea shipping, port development, and maritime employment. For those cases where climate change impacts require the modification of coastal and maritime infrastructure, e.g. adapted coastal protection measures or raised quays, the investment may be linked with the installation of renewable energy facilities. This allows not only combined climate change adaptation and mitigation actions, but helps also to refund the costs of adaptation. Europe’s seas have a high growth potential but they also suffer already today from severe environmental impacts. Education and training as well as innovative management tools are our keys to activate these growth potentials without harming our marine resources.
This issue of the EUCC (Coastal & Marine Union) quarterly magazine analyses climate change implications for ports, shipping and off-shore renewable energy, focusing in particular on experiences and projects run in the Baltic and the North Seas.