NEWS

Innosea to prepare Moroccan ports for climate change impact

Marine renewable energy specialist Innosea has been awarded a contract to provide climate change risk assessment and adaptation services to ANP Morocco – Morocco’s National Ports’ Agency.

The contract has been awarded by a joint venture comprising Moroccan maritime engineering firm MDC Ingenierie, and Portuguese hydraulics consultancy Hidromod.

Under the terms of the contract, Innosea will provide its comprehensive package of climate change adaptation services to support port and harbour infrastructure in ANP Morocco’s portfolio.

The purpose is to mitigate future climate change risk and identify solutions to reinforce the ports’ resilience against present and future climate change impacts.

“Ports and harbours are critical infrastructure not only to the global maritime community, but to the global transport ecosystem and Moroccan economy,” said Bruno Borgarino, head of climate change adaptation at Innosea. “Their nearshore position puts ports at considerable risk from the ongoing and worsening impacts of climate change. Our task is to support Morocco in safeguarding and future-proofing its critical port infrastructure.”

Innosea will provide advanced climate change risk assessments (CCRAs) following a tried and tested three-step approach: Identification of changes in design environmental conditions; identification of consequences on port assets and infrastructure under the scope of work, and risk scoring for assets and infrastructure and proposed mitigating measures.

Innosea will also utilise a proprietary modelling tool to assess the reliability of future climate change projections to perform site-specific impact studies of climate changes on designated port infrastructure. The resulting assessments will determine how climate change stimuli may evolve over time, identifying risks and opportunities to critical port assets, as well as defining climate change adaptation solutions.

Recommendations to improve the ports resiliency will then be given in a roadmap, helping for future investments and decision making when planning a new project in the ports.

Further, Innosea’s climate change experts will have the opportunity to conduct a campaign to raise awareness about climate change and to perform training for ANP Morocco’s employees, in collaboration with ports’ consultants from Innosea’s sister company ABL.

“By bringing together multi-disciplined expertise across metocean and environmental engineering, structural and civil engineering, and combining this with the ports and harbour know-how from ABL, Innosea is well placed to support ANP Morocco in identifying the right solutions for its assets,”  added Mr Borgarino.

Innosea’s experience in climate change adaptation includes the offshore wind industry and maritime ports and harbour infrastructure. This service forms one of the six key pillars of ABL’s energy transition portfolio, including hydrogen, electrification, carbon capture utilisation and storage, emissions consulting and energy storage.

“This project for ANP Morocco demonstrates our commitment to driving sustainability development across maritime and energy industries, beyond our work in developing renewable energy resource,” added RV Ahilan, Chief Energy Transition Officer at ABL Group. “It allows us to apply our specially developed climate change adaptation expertise to support the future resilience of critical maritime infrastructure, such as the global port network.”

Innosea is part of the international renewable energy consultancy OWC, which is a subsidiary of Oslo-listed energy and marine consultancy group ABL Group ASA.