Most renewable energy technologies, biomass, solar, hydropower, etc., require relatively large footprint areas for GW scale electricity generation. Therefore, they must compete for land with other uses like nature conservation areas or food production. Considering that about 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by water, it is obvious the interest of using part of that space to produce green energy. In this sense, the “EU Strategy to harness the potential of offshore renewable energy for a climate neutral future” (COM(2020) 741), states the crucial role of offshore energy technologies to achieve the carbon emission reduction targets. Floating PV facilities have already colonised many lakes and are starting to explore their expansion towards the sea. However, this requires a deep redesign of the whole infrastructure and its components to withstand the challenging conditions of the open sea. At the same time, tougher materials are needed to replace the High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) that are currently used for building the floaters in inland floating PV. Therefore, ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) is proposed for having 40 times higher elastic modulus than HDPE and being able to prestress it. Furthermore, concrete is fully biocompatible, while HDPE pose an environmental risk since its physical degradation, photodegradation, oxidation etc. can cause microplastic pollution1. The strategic objective of NaturSea-PV is to improve the overall lifetime, reliability and maintainability of marine substructures for offshore floating PV, to reduce degradation and failure rates, and thus investment risk and Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). This implies the redesign of the substructure considering the harsh conditions of the open sea, and the need to ensure durability with the minimum construction and maintenance costs.

European commission (European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency)