The ORECCA (Offshore Renewable Energy Conversion Platforms – Coordination Action) Project, with a duration of 18 months, ended in August 2011. The goals of the ORECCA project were to create a framework for knowledge sharing and to develop a roadmap for research activities in the context of offshore renewable energy platforms.
Within the ORECCA Project, the scope of the offshore renewable energy sector was confined to offshore wind, wave energy and tidal stream.
The total marine area considered was very wide: from the Azores to the Black Sea and from Iceland to the Canary islands. It was divided into three target areas: Mediterranean and Black Sea, Atlantic Ocean, North and Baltic Sea. The information about the offshore renewable resources, the bathymetry, the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zones), the distance from shore, the MPA (Marine Protected Areas), the ports and the offshore renewable plants in all the European waters was collected and elaborated in a GIS (Geographical Information System), and then used for developing qualitative-quantitative scenarios for single resources and for the combined resources, too. The main results are presented in this paper. After the end of the project, a WebGIS application, sponsored by RSE, was also developed in order to make the spatial data and the obtained results directly available for all interested people.
The main contents and functionalities of this application are also presented herein.
