Volume 30: Urban Energy Systems towards Carbon Neutrality

Environmental and Energy Performance of Offshore Aquaculture Systems Incorporating with Ocean Renewable Energy Sources Weiyu Yuan, Jing-Chun Feng, Si Zhang, Songwei Sheng, Liwei Sun, Chenyao Le

Abstract

Aquaculture industry continues to grow globally as an increasing need for global food access and security. The corresponding operations for aquaculture are moving to farther offshore areas, pursuing greater productivity. Several new offshore aquaculture systems incorporating with ocean renewable energy sources, have emerged in recent years. However, the environmental and economic effects of these offshore aquaculture systems have not been systematically performed up to now. In this study, a wave powered offshore aquaculture platform, Penghu, was taken as a case study to evaluate the environmental and economic performance using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost assessment (LCCA). Additionally, the energy performance of power system on the platform was also discussed. Results showed that the carbon footprint of the aquaculture platform was 2,307 t CO2-eq. The production operations on the platform achieved zero-carbon emissions, due to all production facilities were entirely powered by renewable energy. Additionally, the energy payback time of the power system was about 0.8 years. The energy payback ratio is 25.23. The LCCA analysis indicated that the profits from this new offshore aquaculture platform is substantial, although the total cost is much higher than that of the conventional system.

Keywords marine aquaculture, offshore fishery, ocean renewable energy, life cycle assessment, life cycle cost assessment, carbon footprint