Creating opportunities to adapt to climate change through innovative ...

3.2 The two main chains3.2.1 BE Industrial agglomerate AquaClusterThe meeting of the 21 st of January was mostly dedicated to this part, as most of theparticipants were private players interested in short/mid-term results.The format of the meeting and the variety of the presentations led to several types ofdiscussions on the topic.Attendance List– Corus– Milieufederatie– The Firm– Provincie Noord-Holland– Acacia Water / Eco-polder project (Ref. 5.11)– DeltaresContributions from– REDstack (Ref. 5.12)– Eneco – ACRRES (Ref. 5.13)Firstly, most were somewhat cautious about Blue Energy technology, as it is still too much inthe future to be considered. However, at this stage, the chain is strong enough to stand onits own without a Blue Energy plant, so we could focus on the later parts.Secondly, the possibilities of sustainable technologies to be linked with co-siting initiativesare both broad and unproven. Corus expressed from the beginning that they are interestedin what these opportunities bring, from the perspective of linking with their wastemanagement, not with the products it may bring.Thirdly, one big criticism against potential pioneers is that so many of them still go bankruptevery year, even with government support, which has not been helping their popularity withthe usual public investors.We can conclude that even on co-siting through waste management there is still muchground to cover: Convincing business cases must be built, defining the ownership of thewaste and each party’s responsibilities and still must be able to stand on their own, mostlywithout subsidies. Most of the opportunities we could find (such as shrimp growing) had noserious representative to make an investment in the area. If this waste is linked further withfood production, it involves a whole series of regulation barriers and public image issues. Tomanage such complicated linkages can be a job by itself.The linkages that became most clear with the discussion were the connection betweenCorus and Eneco’s similar ACRRES project, and The Firm with “Cluster” Management.Corus needs a reliable partner with which to trust their carbon credits, and Eneco is a strongenough partner to suggest it will not let the project fail out of liquidity issues.If more linkages are created, it might be an idea to let a private company specialized inprocess management to maintain the connections between all the parties, as theserelationships can be consuming, and Corus, for example, presented it as one of the majorbarriers to trying out with several small projects from different parties.11