Background:
The Mediterranean basin is shared by 22 countries and several island territories facing a common triple deficit: electricity shortfalls, freshwater scarcity, and dependency on imported fossil fuels. These challenges are structural and deepening — population growth, climate stress, and grid under-investment compound each other across the region's southern and eastern shores.
At the same time, the Mediterranean offers a compelling convergence of renewable resources where solar irradiation among the world's highest, consistent coastal and offshore wind, and significant wave energy potential, alongside ~46,000 km of coastline and roughly 150 million coastal inhabitants who stand to benefit from decentralized clean energy supply.
The Blue Economy is now attracting serious finance. The EU's EMFAF, EIB Blue Sustainable Ocean Strategy, and multilateral development banks are channeling capital toward marine-based solutions. Recent peer-reviewed modelling of offshore floating wind-to-hydrogen systems (Pegler et al., 2025, Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2025.01.172) demonstrates that green hydrogen becomes increasingly competitive as capacity factors rise, discount rates fall with technology de-risking, and electrolyzer capital expenditure declines through learning rates; which is a trajectory directly applicable to Mediterranean deployment contexts.
Zooming into Lebanon's energy context, it provides both urgency and analytical richness to the study. The country has experienced a near-total collapse of the state electricity system since 2021, with the national utility (Électricité du Liban) providing only a few hours of grid power per day in most regions. The population has responded by relying heavily on private diesel generator networks, which are expensive, polluting, and economically regressive. The cost of electricity from private generators in Lebanon routinely exceeds $0.30–$0.70 per kWh which is among the highest effective rates in the world; thus, creating a strong economic case for alternative supply.
The Challenge:
Floating Hydrogen Ports (FHP) company www.floatinghydrogenports.com has developed the Sea Ring: a modular floating platform of 33-metre sea-surface diameter, integrating wind, wave, and solar energy harvesting on a single structure. The Sea Rings are Lego structures made of steel and fiberglass, the components are designed to be transported by container to the nearest port, assembled on site within a week, and launched to sea; tugged to location, and anchored.
Sea Rings can be deployed individually or as interconnected arrays, producing electricity for grid injection or feeding an on-board electrolyzer for green hydrogen production. The multi-source harvesting design provides a more stable output profile than single-technology installations, improving capacity factors which is a critical driver of levelized cost of hydrogen (LCoH) competitiveness.
Through rigorous techno-economic modelling applied to carefully selected Mediterranean sites, the industrial challenge is to evaluate and demonstrate that an integrated Sea Ring system is both technically viable and economically credible, and that replication across the Mediterranean coastline can unlock material green hydrogen supply for regional and export markets. The challenge explicitly moves beyond site-specific feasibility to address the conditions under which the Sea Ring becomes a scalable solution.
At its core, the Sea Ring challenge is about transformation: converting a promising engineering concept into a fully validated, commercially deployable, and ecologically compliant solution tailored to Mediterranean conditions and specifically to Lebanon/AUB shoreline. This requires not only technical optimization but a rigorous economic, regulatory, and market analysis which is the focus of this industrial challenge.
Objective:
The challenge is structured around two interconnected streams of work: technical design design and economic-commercial analysis. Together, these streams are intended to produce actionable recommendations for FHP and regional stakeholders on the viability of Sea Ring deployment in the Lebanese context and its implications for broader Mediterranean commercialization.
Approach:
- Technical baseline design review with reference to the selected shoreline addressing Eastern Mitterrandian wave and wind load on the structure; evaluating energy harvesting integration of wind, wave, and solar generation, identifying assembly and deployment logistics, and assessing ecological impact on local marine system. The evaluation is expected not only to determine technoeconomic feasibility of the system but also to recommend changes in design aspects that results in optimal system.
- A central decision in the Sea Ring business case is the choice of energy carrier. This challenge calls for a comparative analysis of two primary options: 1) grid-tied electricity and 2) green hydrogen. For option 2, electrolysis of seawater or desalinated water will use harvested electricity to produce hydrogen. Higher capital cost and operational complexity. Potential for higher-value applications: fuel cells, industrial hydrogen, ammonia production. This is aligned with EU Hydrogen Strategy and MENA hydrogen export ambitions for long term.
- Technoeconomic and commercial analysis is performed on the Sea Ring to support decision for selecting the best and feasible business model such as Energy as SaaS (Software as a Service) vs Product Owner; and available financing mechanisms.
