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The existing pressures on coastal areas are prompting the off-shore transfer of economic activities such as aquaculture, transportation, tourism, energy, leading to new challenges for the sustainable use of the sea and calling for integration of different activities in the same area. This paper conceptually designs a multi-use off-shore area in a mild sea, whose purpose is the setup of an energetically self-sustained fish farm. The climate conditions for aquaculture and renewable energy production are assessed first. The features and production of the fish farm are then designed, as well as the renewable energy system offering the power support. A new dedicated tool is presented and adopted for the set-up and sizing of the electrical system required for the power stabilisation and energy supply in case the multi-use area is not grid-connected. The layout and payback time of the multi-use are finally examined, showing that wave energy systems are still far to make such installation economically competitive., this paper reflects opinions of the authors, not necessarly corrsponding to thos of the EU Commission. The Authors are the only reposible of the content of the paper.

In the near future, the oceans will be subjected to a massive development of marine infrastructures, including offshore wind, tidal and wave energy farms and constructions for marine aquaculture. The development of these facilities will unavoidably exert environmental pressures on marine ecosystems. It is therefore crucial that the economic costs, the use of marine space and the environmental impacts of these activities remain within acceptable limits. Moreover, the installation of arrays of wave energy devices is still far from being economically feasible due to many combined aspects, such as immature technologies for energy conversion, local energy storage and moorings. Therefore, multi-purpose solutions combining renewable energy from the sea (wind, wave, tide), aquaculture and transportation facilities can be considered as a challenging, yet advantageous, way to boost blue growth. This would be due to the sharing of the costs of installation and using the produced energy locally to feed the different functionalities and optimizing marine spatial planning. This paper focuses on the synergies that may be produced by a multi-purpose offshore installation in a relatively calm sea, i.e. , the Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy, and specifically offshore Venice. It analyzes the combination of aquaculture, energy production from wind and waves, and energy storage or transfer. Alternative solutions are evaluated based on specific criteria, including the maturity of the technology, the environmental impact, the induced risks and the costs. Based on expert judgment, the alternatives are ranked and a preliminary layout of the selected multi-purpose installation for the case study is proposed, to further allow the exploitation of the synergies among different functionalities.