PRESS RELEASE

Amazon funds the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm
located between offshore wind turbines

 Caption: A CGI image showing what seaweed farming between offshore wind turbines could look like. Picture credit: Smartland landscape architecture

 · Seaweed has great potential to help tackle climate change by absorbing CO₂ as it grows, and could enhance biodiversity.
· Locating seaweed farms between offshore wind turbines uses untapped space to capture carbon.
· If scaled, the European seaweed farming sector has the potential to reduce CO₂ by millions of tonnes a year by 2040.
· Seaweed can also be used to manufacture packaging, food and clothing.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16, 2023 – Amazon today announced it is funding the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm located between offshore wind turbines. The project, known as North Sea Farm 1, will be located in a wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands. It has been designed to test and improve methods of seaweed farming, while researching the potential of seaweed to sequester carbon.

By locating the farm in previously empty space between turbines, the project is able to expand seaweed cultivation in the otherwise heavily used North Sea. If seaweed farming were to expand to occupy the entire space occupied by wind farms, expected to be approximately 1 million hectares by 2040, it could reduce millions of tonnes of CO₂ annually.

The project is managed by a consortium of scientific researchers and partners from the seaweed industry, led by non-profit organisation North Sea Farmers (NSF), and is expected to become operational by the end of this year. The consortium hopes that North Sea Farm 1 will evolve into a blueprint for offshore seaweed farming the world over.

Amazon is granting €1.5 million to create this first-of-its-kind seaweed farm and carry out a year’s scientific research into carbon reduction through seaweed farming. The funding comes from its $100 million global Right Now Climate Fund – Amazon’s commitment to support nature-based solutions, which is in addition to the work the company is doing to decarbonise its business. Through this fund, Amazon has committed €20 million to projects across Europe to enhance biodiversity and conserve, restore and improve nature in communities where Amazon operates.

The world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm located between offshore wind turbines

North Sea Farm 1 aims to kickstart innovation in offshore seaweed farming. The grant will provide the investment required to construct a 10-hectare seaweed farm, which is expected to produce at least 6,000kg of fresh seaweed in its first year.

This funding will also support North Sea Farmers in analysing and improving the farm’s production capabilities. At the same time, researchers will explore the potential of seaweed farms to remove carbon from the atmosphere, modelling the impacts of large-scale seaweed farming. The non-profit hopes these findings will help play a role in scaling the industry. North Sea Farm 1 and others like it will also provide an opportunity to create jobs through the farming and production of seaweed-based products.

Roeland Donker, Country Manager, Amazon Netherlands, said: "Like trees, as seaweed grows it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, and it can be used to create biodegradable packaging, as well as food and fashion products. We’re hugely excited to be investing in such an important project off the coast of the Netherlands, which could significantly boost Europe’s seaweed sector.”

"Seaweed could be a key tool in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, yet it’s currently farmed at a relatively small scale in Europe,” said Zak Watts, Director EU Sustainability at Amazon.  “We're delighted to fund this project to help us reach a greater understanding of its ability to help fight climate change.”

The evolution of farming in the North Sea

North Sea Farmers (NSF) has championed the seaweed sector in Europe since 2014. The non-profit will lead the project, working with a consortium of organisations from across Europe that are involved in the entire seaweed production supply chain. This includes researchers Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Deltares and Silvestrum Climate Associates, seaweed extract manufacturers Algaia and maritime contractor Van Oord.

Eef Brouwers, Manager of Farming and Technology at North Sea Farmers, said: “Potentially, up to 85,000 full-time jobs could be created in the European seaweed sector by replicating North Sea Farm 1 across the North Sea, re-purposing the space amongst wind farms. These jobs would not only be in the farming process but also in the production and sales of seaweed-based products.”

As part of the Right Now Climate Fund’s commitment to funding nature-based projects in European communities, Amazon has already invested in a nature and wildlife restoration fund in France, a reforestation programme in Italy, an urban greening programme in Germany and a rewilding and tree planting project in the UK. Additionally, Amazon has funded forest conservation and restoration in the Appalachian Mountains in the United States, the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator programme in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and Amazon is a key member of the LEAF Coalition, a new global public-private initiative to mobilise at least $1 billion to protect the world's tropical rainforests.

For more information on the North Sea Farm 1 project, please visit: www.northseafarmers.org/nsf1 

Picture credit: Smartland landscape architecture

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About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit About Amazon and follow @AmazonNews.

About The Climate Pledge

Amazon is the co-founder and first signatory of The Climate Pledge, a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon by 2040. As part of this, nearly 400 signatories in 55 sectors and 35 countries are working together on initiatives to preserve nature and invest in decarbonisation technologies.

About Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund

In September 2021, Amazon announced it will invest €20 million from its $100m Right Now Climate Fund in projects across Europe that support nature-based projects which provide environmental benefits such as climate change mitigation and biodiversity restoration, as well as social benefits from job creation to access to nature. Learn more about Amazon’s sustainability efforts.

About North Sea Farmers
North Sea Farmers (NSF) is an independent and not-for-profit sector organisation for the European seaweed industry.  NSF has a member base of over one hundred companies, pioneering start-ups, research institutes, NGOs and other stakeholders. By enabling these members to become successful with their seaweed ambitions NSF hope to shape an innovative and prosperous sector in Europe. NSF works in the entire seaweed value chain and facilitates knowledge exchange on sustainable seaweed cultivation, production, marketing, education, policies and research, and facilitates joint innovation projects. NSF’s activities are mainly focused on, but not limited to, the North Sea. For North Sea Farm 1, North Sea Farmers will head up a consortium of partner organisations from across Europe that are involved in the entire seaweed production supply chain. This includes researchers Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Deltares and Silvestrum Climate Associates, seaweed extract manufacturers Algaia and maritime contractors Van Oord.