Editorial: Perspectives for marine energy in the Mediterranean area Volume II

The need to decisively and urgently address the transition to renewable sources of energy, and the awareness that offshore energy production is not only a possibility but a concrete EU strategy has stimulated us to take a new look at the situation of offshore energy in the Mediterranean, after 3 years since the publication of the first Research Topic on the Perspectives for Marine Energy in the Mediterranean Area.

If in the previous Research Topic the focus had been mainly on the level of development of the technologies available for the Mediterranean Sea, in this one we focus more on the way forward for an effective introduction of these technologies in a particularly fragile and complex context such as the Mediterranean Area. Marine Renewable Energies (MREs) are still under-deployed in the Mediterranean area for many reasons, including legislative constraints, social acceptance and a lower energy availability than in the Atlantic Ocean and Northern European seas.

In this volume, we have collected eight research articles and one perspective article centered on these very Research Topic. These papers mostly stem from the activities and synthesize the results of the BLUE DEAL project, that was conceived and implemented by 12 Mediterranean partners to tackle these Research Topic and set the route for blue energy (BE) deployment in the Mediterranean area.