Warning on marine energy funding

EUROPE risks losing its lead in marine energy to America unless the European Union finds urgent funds to support the fledgling industry, renewable energy officials will be warned this week.

The Edinburgh-based head of the European Ocean Energy Association (OEA), Sian George, will tell a conference in Brussels that marine energy could be a huge global industry centred on Europe if it had investment remotely comparable to the nuclear sector.

The OEA is asking the European Commission to give emerging marine technology a bigger chunk of a €4.5 billion (4bn) funding pot which will be generated by selling carbon permits.

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The OEA is pressing the commission to fund ten marine energy projects in the next round of grants from the "NER 300" pool of funds. The three grants offered during a previous round attracted fierce competition, especially among UK firms.

George said the funding is needed to take marine energy to the "next stage", moving from prototypes to fully functioning energy farms with multiple devices.

She said: "The US, Canada, Korea, Chile and Australia are all looking at this technology and if some of them were to put in place favourable tariffs at the level the Scottish Government has then we would quickly see an exodus of some developers to other markets, and we would lose the benefit that we have at the moment that the cluster of the world's leading companies and projects is in Europe."

She said Canada in particular was considering a high incentive for tidal energy, while the US was "slowly but surely" increasing its support for renewables.

The OEA says that whereas the EU has invested €2.75bn in nuclear power research over the last four years, it has only spent €80 million on marine energy since 1984.

"That's really not a lot of money to kick start an entire new industry," George said.

"Over the next ten years if the commission was to invest even half a billion euros in marine energy they would see fantastic results."