Greenland Oil Spill Response (GOSR) and international cooperation partners has formed a consortium with the purpose of researching and improving oil spill response in the Arctic.
The consortium is assembled by the Finnish Environment Institue SYKE and funded by the EU. The consortium will research in the development of oil spill response methods and the evaluation of their environmental effects in the Arctic. Set to launch in March, the 3.5-year project will involve a total of 13 research institutes and companies from nine different countries. The project was granted a total of EUR 5.28 million in funding as part of the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. GOSR’s holdings in the project amounts to 230,000 EUR, which will be used for purchase of equipment for testing and vessel-leasing in Greenland. "The project will focus on developing, comparing and evaluating the effectiveness and environmental effects of different oil spill response methods in a cold climate. Specifically for Greenland and GOSR the focus will be on insitu burning and the use of chemical dispersion in cold water.” Says GOSR’s Managing Director Lonnie Bogø Wilms. The results of the project will be made available for use to international organisations that plan and carry out crossborder oil spill response cooperation in Arctic sea areas. The full name of the project is ”Integrated oil spill response actions and environmental effects – GRACE.” The aim of the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme is to drive economic growth and the creation of new jobs. The project consortium includes SYKE, two Finnish companies; Lamor Corporation Ab and Meritaito Oy. The other members of the consortium are Aarhus University from Denmark, the University of Tartu and the Tallinn University of Technology from Estonia, RWTH Aachen University from Germany, the University of the Basque Country from Spain, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Norut Narvik from Norway, SSPA Sweden AB from Sweden and the University of Manitoba from Canada.
For more information
Managing Director Lonnie Bogø Wilms
+299 325 245
(Source: Greenland Oil Spill Response, GOSR)