Protecting our planet and mitigating the worst effects of climate change are a key element of ESA’s Strategy 2040. Whilst the environmental impact of industry and transportation are well-documented, fewer people realise that the maritime sector in Europe is responsible for around 4% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Although the total maritime emissions in Europe have started to fall since 2022, the journey to net zero remains significant. No single nation can achieve this alone, so collaboration is key. To that end, companies and experts from 20 nations recently came together at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) for the ‘Showcasing Space Applications for Maritime Decarbonisation Workshop,’ to share details of innovative projects and services using space assets, data and technologies to address decarbonisation challenges in the sector. These projects are being developed in response to ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) Maritime Decarbonisation thematic funding call, which closed earlier this year.

“Space data is a key enabler and has a major role to play in maritime decarbonisation,” said Rita Rinaldo, Head of Applications, Projects and Studies Division at ESA, in her opening remarks, explaining how BASS has already supported more than 100 projects in the maritime sector over the past ten years. “At ESA BASS, one of our key roles is to facilitate dialogue between communities, and to provide the opportunity for key players in the sector to come together, share experiences and make connections,” she continued, a theme that Nil Angli, Maritime Lead for ESA, reinforced.

“Today is not about ships or even spaceships,” Mr Angli said. “Today is about partnerships and working together to accelerate the green transition in the maritime sector.”

Members of the Maritime Sustainability Task Force, established in early 2024, convened ahead of the workshop, with several members delivering keynote speeches throughout the day. This included new member Salvador Furio, Development Director from Fundación ValenciaPort, Europe’s fourth largest port. He outlined the role of space applications in the port’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2030. His speech set the scene for the presentations on space-enabled solutions for ports, including sedimentation forecasting in ports, infrastructure maintenance, a 5G and satellite-based tool for assisted and autonomous shipping, and circular economy pathways for turning emissions waste into valuable resources.

In a keynote on Digitalisation, Thomas Mellor, Head of Technical Partnerships at the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), outlined how new regulations and standards are also driving the move to decarbonisation in the sector, including the new IHO S-100 universal data framework designed by the UKHO.

The four projects in this session showcased how space data is optimising routes to cut fuel consumption, improving safety through enhanced connectivity, and using physics-informed AI to make maritime data more efficient and actionable.

Gavin Allwright, Secretary General of the International Windship Association (IWSA), and one of the founding members of the Maritime Sustainability Task Force, outlined the rapid growth of the wind propulsion and alternative fuels market over the past ten years, and the growing investment in wind technologies in his “Win-win-wind’ keynote speech. The presentations that followed echoed these sentiments, sharing details of innovations around digital ships, airborne wind energy systems (kite) and technologies to convert CO₂ into limestone.

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), also a member of the Maritime Sustainability Task Force, led two afternoon sessions, focusing on emissions monitoring and automation.

Samy Djavidnia, Senior Project Officer at EMSA, stressed the need for collaboration among regulators, operators, industry, space agencies and researchers to unlock trusted and usable data for emissions reduction. Presentations covered space-powered solutions for monitoring pollutants such as CO₂, methane, nitrogen oxides and VOCs—including innovations to track the shadow fleet using Automatic Identification System (AIS) and remote sensing.

Finally, Peter Kirov, Head of Safety, Security and Surveillance at EMSA, spoke about the strategic partnership between EMSA and ESA, and the significance of this ongoing collaboration in addressing some of the major challenges facing the maritime sector. He went on to introduce the Automation session, which showcased applications that use space assets to enhance navigation, maintenance and safety for autonomous and semi-autonomous vessels—while delivering both commercial benefits and emissions reductions.

“Showcasing Space Applications for Maritime Decarbonisation" is the third event in the Space for Blue series of workshops. These events aim to bring key stakeholders together to discuss how space can be a powerful catalyst for maritime—enabling smarter decisions, stronger partnerships and a faster transition to a sustainable future for the sector, not only in Europe but on a global scale.

BASS intends to strengthen the support to companies wishing to propose innovative business ideas using space data and assets for maritime decarbonisation and optimisation of operations at sea and in ports. It will also strive to match-make the aspirations, capabilities and needs of space and maritime ecosystems.

Rangelands – mainly consisting of grasslands used by livestock and wildlife to graze and forage - are critical to both food security and climate resilience. They cover some 40% of the Earth’s land surface, providing a third of the world’s biodiversity and a sixth of global food production. But rangelands are rapidly degrading and being lost, while increasing regulations are making grassland management more challenging for farmers. Irish company Proveye has been working with ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) programme to develop satellite-enabled solutions which are helping to address these challenges.

Proveye has gone from strength to strength, first starting at an ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC), and then moving on to BASS - first to evaluate market appetite and technical feasibility, and later to establish a commercial solution with the aim of generating  sales and expanding into new markets. 

Their first solution, ProvGrass, an Earth observation-enabled Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), is designed to help farmers caught between pressures relating to food security on the one hand and increasing sustainability requirements on the other.
Grassland for dairy and beef farming is the biggest forage crop by area globally, as well as being the most challenging to monitor. At the same time, grass quantity and quality management is essential for profitable livestock production but existing solutions only cover a small area, demand much manual labour, have a high capital cost or only provide generalised regional measurements.
The emerging opportunity for ProvGrass is to supply the industry with a solution that enables it to measure, track, encourage and reward the adoption of more sustainable regenerative and productive practises for grassland.

ProvGrass offers:

• integration of satellite and UAV data in one platform for reliable and consistent data.
• quantity and quality metrics to inform the farmer of grass available now and into the future to satisfy the feed demand of the grazing herd
• automated, scalable delivery
• sensor-agnostic methods that make it adaptable to new data and technology of the future

ProvGrass is now attracting significant investments, securing large contracts and generating jobs. It was this first activity that sparked Proveye’s second solution ProvDMR, currently piloting with BASS on several sites in Ireland and Africa. It uses grasslands for above-ground carbon sequestration at scale, while also facilitating biodiversity management in grasslands to support regenerative farming.

Proveye CEO Jerome O’Connell explained: “We started with ProvGrass, and as we were engaging with customers through that, we kept hearing about the challenges of offsetting emissions.”
“Some 40% of Earth’s land surface is grass. We realised there is huge potential around carbon storage and biodiversity offsetting here, with grasslands a virtually untapped natural mechanism to store carbon for nature-based credits.”
“Using satellite imagery to additionally monitor and report on the improvement of biodiversity in grasslands bring greater integrity and higher value than carbon offsets only.” 

The potential for generating nature-based credits from grasslands is currently limited by poor monitoring, reporting and verification capabilities, while existing biodiversity monitoring methods are manual, time-consuming, unreliable and unscalable.

The value added by ProvDMR is related to:

• the almost unlimited spatial coverage provided by ESA’s Sentinel 1 & 2 space assets
• lower operational costs compared to ground-based validation
• scalability from 1ha to global terrestrial land area
• capacity to integrate interpretation options including biomass, fire, stocking density, grazing activity, distribution of nitrogen-fixing vegetation, change in woody biomass, biodiversity, ecosystem health and human activity

Mr O’Connell said: “We have been on a journey with ESA for six years – and are still going. It is fair to say that the funding, support and validation have been fundamental to the business and products that we have developed, and the market penetration that we have been able to achieve. It would have been very difficult to do this without ESA.”

Davide Coppola, Head of Space Application Initiatives Section at BASS, said: “The core aim of BASS is to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative space-based applications and services while also delivering socio-economic impacts at scale. This shared journey with Proveye is a great example of delivering this in practice.”
 

At this week’s Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM25) in Bremen, ESA Member States formally approved the new ACCESS programme, ensuring that European businesses will continue to benefit from the growth, innovation and dynamism brought by the commercialisation of space.

As part of the combined budget of €22.3 billion agreed for ESA by the Member States, Associate Members and Cooperating States, a total of €306 million has been agreed for ACCESS. This comprises €169 million subscription to ScaleUp and €137 million subscription to Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS). As the flagship commercialisation programme from ESA, ACCESS will accelerate the commercialisation and competitiveness of the European space sector, in line with ESA’s Strategy 2040.

The context for CM25 is a complex one, set against a volatile backdrop of geopolitical instability, rapid technological change and unprecedented access to space.  As ESA Director General outlined earlier this week, “CM25 is more than just another Ministerial, it is a moment of radical decision-making,” and the investment in ACCESS reflects a wider European commitment to space, and recognition of the urgent need for Europe to strengthen its presence in the global space market.

ACCESS will continue to deliver support through the established ScaleUp and BASS elements. It offers enhanced financial, business and technical support for ideation, incubation, acceleration and market deployment of innovative products and services across the space value chain. It connects businesses, investors, suppliers and potential customers in space markets and the wider economy for the benefit of Europe.

New opportunities for European industry

The investment from the Member States this week means that the ScaleUp and BASS elements, as part of ACCESS, will continue to support Europe’s space sector.  For ScaleUp this means new and renewed BICs and Phi-Labs, and improved dealflow through Marketplace. For BASS this means new thematic campaigns tuned to the priorities of the Member States, additional and improved funding structures to facilitate innovation and growth, and the expansion of activities across all sectors, including safety and security.

Find out more about ACCESS