Reducing the ecological footprint of ports with ECOncrete®’s bio-enhancing concrete technologies

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Living Ports (Reducing the ecological footprint of ports with ECOncrete®’s bio-enhancing concrete technologies)

Période du rapport: 2022-06-01 au 2023-05-31

Context: 70% of Coastal & Marine Infrastructure (CMI hereon) is made of standard gray concrete, yet concrete is known as a poor substrate for marine flora and fauna to thrive. Cement –the key ingredient in concrete– is the source of 8% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Due to a lack of available concrete alternatives, CMI is designed and built with little or no ecological consideration.
ECOLOGICAL CONCRETE SOLUTION. ECO has created and validated a win-win solution for both thriving ecosystems and high-performing concrete structures. Their science-based innovative technology is designed to encourage development of rich and diverse marine life as an integral part of CMI such as seawalls, breakwaters, and urban waterfronts. The proprietary technology is based on three core elements: bio-enhancing concrete compositions, complex surface textures, and science-based designs, which work in synergy to decrease the ecological footprint of concrete CMI while enhancing their strength and durability in a process called Bioprotection. ECO's bioprotection is achieved through the growth of species like oysters that deposit calcitic skeletons onto the concrete. By these means, concrete is 10 times stronger (tensile strength) compared to concrete with no oyster growth.
Technical Objectives:
- Industrialisation of ECO technology. Develop large scale mixing capacity for the proprietary ECO’s ECO-P® and BioMud® including sourcing, storage, mixing, packaging and labelling and logistics.
- Conduct large scale demonstrations. A local constructor should be able to pre-cast and deploy 310m2 ECO Seawall® and 100 Coastalock® units..
- R&D for Monitoring and Observation Platform. CAR Shipyards provides the project with a monitoring floating platform that has wide underwater windows which allows both the monitoring tasks and reinforcing environmental education.
- Monitor the impact of ECO’ s solutions. The different results between standard concrete and ECO’s solutions in terms of bioenhancing must be supported by monitoring tasks.
Business objectives:
- Communicate and disseminate the results of the project and potential customer engagement. Two tools were created for dissemination: a LinkedIn Living Ports profile and a Living Ports Web Page. The aim is to develop public relations and marketing strategies to establish presence on the market and raise awareness among investors and potential customers EU-wide as well as internationally.
- Potential customer engagement. During the first period of the project, the partners made efforts to engage with potential future customers and close relationships between partners (ECO, VIGO and CAR) for future relationships.
- Develop commercialization strategy. The commercialization strategy and its related business plan update will be developed the second year of the project.
- ROM and EN code. This project aims to gain inclusion of ECO’s technology in ROM (“Recomendaciones de Obras Marítimas” - maritime and coastal works standards code). VIGO has already started discussions with “Puertos del Estado” for that purpose.

WP3 Demonstration Projects
● Tendering process issued by VIGO and successful contractor bidders awarded with a contract.
● Construction and deployment phase 100% completed and waterfront infrastructures commissioned.
● Monitoring platform built and commissioned.
WP4 Monitoring
● Monitoring devices procured, calibrated, shipped, and stored in Vigo. Sound, structural and biological monitoring baseline data collection completed.
● Monitoring process initiated in April 2023. All actions were performed by DTU, ECO, Vigo and a subcontracted sound monitoring expert.
● Monitoring protocol completed between VIGO, DTU and ECO in May 2023 after including sound monitoring baseline data.
WP5 Exploitation and Communication
● Living Ports official website and LinkedIn profile and DTU Website and Youtube channel updated for dissemination and communication purposes updated by ECO including relevant events occurred during Period 2. Port of Vigo and BlueGrowthVigo social network profiles (Twitter and Linkedin profiles) regularly updated with Living Port project events and dissemination activities.
● VIGO and ECO formalised relationship with communication channels and entities such as: El Faro de Vigo, Nius Diario, Cadena SER, Atlantico, La voz de Galicia, El Español, Treintayseis.
● Official opening event to the public of the NAUTILUS Outreach and monitoring platform held on Mar 24 2023.
● Exploitation actions achieved during Period 2:
○ ECO requested a letter of interest from the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) Organization to review the project as a case study towards potential future Blue Flag certification for working waterfronts.
○ VIGO will request a letter of interest from Puertos del Estado in the creation of a white paper guideline on the potential future inclusion of bioenhancing and sustainable concrete technologies in the ROM directions.
WP6 Management
● Follow up meetings held between all the partners weekly and bimonthly accompanied by the corresponding minutes, including risk management, production follow-up, and monitoring follow-up
● Financial monitoring of partners’ incurred costs, budgetary analysis for the consecution of the technical and business objectives of the project.
● One Steering Committee meeting conducted through video conference in Jan. 2023 and one SC face-to-face meeting held in Vigo in Mar 2023.
WP7 Ethics
● Protection of Personal Data Protocol followed up by each partner internally at their own institution during Period 2 in accordance with the Data Protection Agreement Addendum to the Consortium Agreement.
● Personal Data Protection Committee discussions held over the duration of Period 2.

From a socio-economic perspective, LIVING PORTS project will introduce a cost-effective, scalable, applied innovation to the highly traditional concrete CMI industry. Within the project, LIVING PORTS aims to achieve inclusion of ECO’s technology in ROM and Blue Flag, this will speed up deployment of the technology across Spain and then the rest of Europe and therefore bring benefits to many coastlines in the future. Inclusion also validates the technologies strength and durability, which will be a key consideration from port authorities (Puertos del Estado).
From a business development perspective, LIVING PORTS project will expedite market penetration and uptake of ecology-inspired concrete technology, through a public, fully scaled demonstration. This will transform ECO from a promising start-up to a growing SME. It also enables CAR to gain vital experience with eco-friendly, outreach and monitoring construction and be at the forefront of this growing industry. The scaled de-risking project in the Port of Vigo will overcome the CMI market’s traditional scepticism and act as a flagship project showing the technology can be applied at scale in any coastal or marine infrastructure project.
From an environmental perspective, LIVING PORTS will yield significant semi/quantitative environmental impacts in immediate, and medium terms as well as long-term effects that are beyond the scope of the call.
From a socio-cultural perspective, LIVING PORTS is also expected to encourage stronger environmental education and community involvement, through community and outreach programs through communication and dissemination activities planned during the project.

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Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Living Ports (Reducing the ecological footprint of ports with ECOncrete®’s bio-enhancing concrete technologies)

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