“What it means is jobs. It’s our local economy. It’s about our history and it’s about the competitive advantage we have…for us to grow in the long term,” Amo said.
Rhode Island is making a big push to create an economy built around its reputation as the Ocean State. Four years ago, policymakers approved a long-term plan that aimed to position the blue economy as core to its development. This involved plans to grow its offshore wind space, marine sector, and innovations around ocean technologies to shape the future of the state’s economy.
The industries that make up the blue economy are estimated to contribute about $5 billion annually to the state’s economic output, according to the University of Rhode Island. A clearer sense of what the blue economy entails is key to help generate the resources needed to catalyze its expansion, Amo said.
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“Once you define it, you then attract both investment of time and resources and energy towards its growth,” he told the Globe. “Because it is here. The terminology is merely making sure that we drive towards it in a very intentional way.”
Amo, 36, who is on the ballot in November vying for his first full-term in office after winning a special election last year, was spending this week and a part of next week meeting with labor experts, researchers, and the private sector as a way to convene different facets of the blue economy in the state and understand their roles in its potential growth.
“Think about it — the supply chain on a wind turbine or an underwater drone requires dozens of companies, lots of inputs, and a lot of planning,” Amo said. “So it’s sort of essential to have these conversations in a lot of different ways and piece together a puzzle so that, you know, as we’re scaling … a whole industry cluster that you have a sense of the players on the field and and one hand knows what the other is doing.”
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The congressman made the case that Rhode Island’s access to the naval industry and its diminutive size — it’s the smallest state in the country — made it easier to connect different players in the economy, and gives it a good shot to become a leader in the blue economy.
The state is host to a Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the Naval War College, and will be home to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine operations center slated to be completed in 2027.
“That is why we are able to scale, if we are intentional, investments, both private and that from the federal government, in a way where we can be the place where you want to demonstrate the capacity of this work to succeed,” he said. “That’s why Rhode Island has a competitive advantage.”
Policymakers need to articulate to Rhode Islanders how industries like fisheries, tourism in coastal cities, startups creating underwater drones, and the defense sectors are all part of the state’s blue economy, according to Amo, and that they produce jobs and wages that sustain families in the state.
“You have to break it down to the job level and so it isn’t so nebulous to [the] man on the street,” he said
Omar Mohammed can be reached at omar.mohammed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter (X) @shurufu.