April 27, 2023 — Last year, Rhode Island’s effort to get a $78 million federal grant to support the blue economy – things like offshore wind power, defense, and aquaculture – came up short.
But a lot of work had gone into applying for it. The University of Rhode Island-led effort was a finalist out of hundreds of applicants, and had gotten a $500,000 federal grant just to apply for the final round. Even after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s department didn’t pick Rhode Island in the end, the people who were involved in applying decided not to take their ball and go home.
The result is now starting to emerge. This week it got a name, and a new report: The Grow Blue Partnership, which released what it’s calling “Rhode Island’s 2030 Blue Economy Action Plan.” (An executive summary of the report is available online and embedded below.)
At its core, the Grow Blue Partnership is an effort to better position the state to get federal money to support the blue economy for initiatives like training the next generation of workers and research ambitions like a full digital replica of Narragansett Bay, called a “Smart Bay.”
“There’s a tremendous amount of federal funding that’s yet to be released,” said Christian Cowan, the executive director of the URI Research Foundation. “We think there’s an opportunity for Rhode Island to leverage that federal funding.”