The Basque Country and Scotland have teamed up for EuropeWave – a new five-year collaborative programme that will channel €20 million to the most promising wave energy concepts.
The initiative is match-funded by the European Commission via its Horizon 2020 programme, and Ocean Energy Europe is on board as project partner.
This collaboration is closely aligned with the decarbonization, industrial and competitiveness objectives of the European Green Deal, and will help meet the European Commission’s newly-announced targets of 100MW of ocean energy by 2025 and at least 1GW by 2030.
EuropeWave will use an innovative ‘pre-commercial procurement’ approach to identify and fund the most promising wave energy devices from developers across Europe. Concepts will be assessed according to strict technical and economic performance metrics, and the best performers will be demonstrated in Basque and Scottish open waters at the end of the programme.
“EuropeWave is a great example of how Scotland can continue to collaborate with European partners, like our great friends in the Basque Country, who have very similar aims and objectives to ourselves. We can work together to bring forward what can hopefully be a very important technology for the whole global community.”
Scottish Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Paul Wheelhouse.
“This project is an ideal platform for collaboration between two regions in Europe to promote a new sector that contributes to the energy transition, creating a new economy and employment for our citizens. It is a clear example of how things should be done.”
Basque Minister for Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment, Arantxa Tapia.
“With EuropeWave we pool public resources for research and demonstration from national and EU level. By effective use of these resources, we hope that this will create more impact for the wave energy sector.”
Matthijs Soede, research programme officer at the European Commission.
“We are delighted to be part of this initiative, which brings together some of the strongest supporters of ocean energy. The industry has long identified a pan-European ‘pre-commercial procurement’ as the right route to progress wave energy, so we can’t wait to see this project get underway in 2021.”
Rémi Gruet, CEO of Ocean Energy Eu.rope
