Drawing on the research initiatives of key actors from industry and academia, the report portrays the development of the sector through collaborative networks, and knowledge exchanges and transfer with the industry towards the creation of new markets. The report also identifies how public and private funds are contributing to the progress of this new energy sector in terms of technology, infrastructure and knowledge.
The work finds that Europe is currently the world leader in ocean energy technology, with more than 50% of global RD&D investments taking place in the EU. In 2011, Europe invested 125 million euros in ocean energy. Half of this investment came from industry and a fifth from EU funds. However, as this industry is still in a nascent phase, the total R&D investment in ocean energy is only about 10% of that for offshore wind.
Research and demonstration of wave and tidal technology is driven mainly by knowledge transfer through academic spin-offs and start-ups. There is a growing interest in ocean energy in academia, which is expected to fulfil the future need for an expert human resource base.
A number of European countries display significant involvement in this stage of the innovation process, with UK, France, and Norway leading the way. The ocean energy industry features intense product innovation, embodied by the development of multiple diverse designs of marine energy devices in the early stages, when the market is not yet well defined. The passage through different phases of the technology development is associated with a specific level of risk linked with the development and deployment of ocean energy arrays. Initiatives such as NER300 and MEADs attempt to reduce the deployment risk for developers and assist market uptake of marine energy technologies.
The JRC, in the framework of the Commission's Strategic Energy Technologies Information System (SETIS), evaluates drivers and barriers to innovation and assesses how European industries and public stakeholders, including the EU, are driving the development of the marine energy sector. This report will soon be followed by the Ocean Energy Status Report 2014, which will present a current overview of the technology and project development.
Read the full report.