Blue economy sectors

As far as semi-intensive aquaculture is concerned, Sardinian companies are currently represented by facilities/plants for the breeding of valuable fish species both of salt and fresh water and of molluscs.

Sardinia is still one of the leading Italian regions in marine fish production, with the greatest development potential both for quantitative as well as qualitative production.

Despite the great availability of suitable sites to undertake the activity, fish farming in Sardinia has played a marginal role in the economy of the region until the late 1990s.

The most recent farms are those set up at sea (offshore) in the 90s, adopting appropriate plant technologies that allow good integration with the surrounding environment. Among the fish, sea bream and sea bass are the two most important marine species bred.

Sardinian ports are responsible for 10% of the national cargo movement and 12% of total passenger movement while activities tied to the maritime transport sector generate income equal to 5.3% of the regional gross value added (Banca Intesa and SRM. 2019).

The port of Cagliari, which has the longest berths on the island, is the ‘core’ harbour of Sardinia in terms of infrastructure, equipment for loading and unloading of containers. Second for the available length of berths comes Porto Torres (North-West).

The blue economy employs 42,300 people in Sardinia and 611 companies are active in the maritime cluster. To date, the greatest weakness of the Sardinian port system is represented by the excessive dependence on the oil sector.

In 2018, the Management Committee of the Port System Authority of the Sardinian Sea unanimously approved the release of a 50-year state-owned maritime concession in favour of Edison Spa for the construction of a terminal for liquefied natural gas in the industrial port of Oristano.

Sardinia is interconnected to the Italian electricity grid. Electricity production reached 13 GWh in 2015 with the majority of the production facilities in the island being fossil-fuel powered (ap-proximately 74%). which consisted of coal power plants (49%) and oil plants (51%). while a moderate share of electricity production comes from renewable sources (approximately 26%). The main source of renewable electricity is solar power (69%) as the island has an installed capacity of 732MW, followed by wind (26%) with an installed capacity of 1.028MW, biofuels (3.3%) and hydro power (1%).