We have received the Sustainability SPIRe award, a new grant from the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) to study the impact of harvesting energy from the ocean on the upper ocean circulation and ecosystem structures. The Sustainability SPIRe (Seed Program for Interdisciplinary Research) is an internal funding mechanism at UT Dallas designed to stimulate interdisciplinary research collaborations in sustainability that will advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In this interdisciplinary work, PI Yousefi, in collaboration with Co-PI Leonardi and Co-PI Maitra, aims to advance the understanding of the potential environmental impacts of offshore wind farms, wave converters, and solar panels. Our overarching goal is more ambitious than just mitigating the effect of renewable energy on the ecosystem but rather using offshore wind turbines (OWTs), floating solar photovoltaics (FPVs), and wave energy converters (WECs) to increase the mixing of nutrients in the ocean, thus stimulating the blue economy and carbon sequestration.
