‘Wave Energy Scotland’ will bring together the best engineering and academic minds to collaborate in a research and development programme intended to accelerate the development of wave technology in the country. Mr Fergus Ewing will provide more detail during a Parliamentary statement on marine energy which he plans to make this week.
Early stage technologies, such as wave energy, can take time to flourish and the development of wave energy in particular has also been hampered by the uncertainty facing the energy sector more widely, following the lengthy and delayed changes to the electricity market resulting from the UK Government’s Electricity Market Reform process. This has meant that investors are presently reluctant to commit to higher risk marine technologies and the resulting lack of capital, despite support from the Scottish Government has seriously hampered the progress of both wave and tidal energy developers.
“With the extraordinary ocean energy resources off Scotland’s coasts, our belief in the future success of wave energy is undiminished” said Mr Ewing. “Now is the right time to consider the future of our support for wave energy in Scotland. This is a young industry and we still have a lot of learning to do in marine renewables. We want to encourage further innovation in wave energy development and we recognise the need for a bold new approach to supporting this emerging technology. There is also a lack of design convergence in wave energy with many different concepts in development, while tidal appears to be converging on a front-runner design.”
Mr Ewing added that while the tidal energy sector is ready to build array demonstration projects, such as the MeyGen project in the Pentland Firth, the wave energy sector must evolve further to gain the confidence of investors.
Wave Energy Scotland is intended to be a fresh and collaborative way to accelerate wave technology development involving collaboration between the best minds in industry and academia to develop technologies that can be commercialised by the private sector.
Mr Ewing said that Marine energy is an important part of the Scottish Government’s renewable energy portfolio offering real economic opportunities for the country.
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