Chairperson’s Message
A warm welcome to the 2017 OES Annual Report and I trust that you will find it informative and useful.I would like to begin by thanking all member countries for their contributions to this report. The country reports included here convey that 2017 has been a landmark year in ocean energy. Cumulative ocean energy capacity has doubled worldwide from less than 12 MW in 2016 to over 25 MW in 2017. In Scotland, two tidal stream arrays have deployed their first phase of development. Successful testing programmes have seen prototype wave and tidal devices and sub-systems deployed globally. In Spain, the first full year of continuous operation of a floating wave energy device occurred with the OCEANTEC device deployed at the BiMEP test site.
Our 2017 feature article is an interview with Dr Andrea E. Copping discussing the environmental issues associated with ocean energy and the challenges occurring as larger-scale commercial developments are installed. Her discussion of the potential transfer of knowledge from other marine industries and the limitations of applying this knowledge to mitigate environmental risks within the ocean energy sector is particularly thought provoking.
Some key achievements for wave and tidal projects are discussed throughout this report. The UK has achieved a key milestone this year with the successful deployment and grid connection of the first phase of two tidal stream arrays, namely the 6 MW first phase of the Atlantis Tidal Ltd MeyGen project in Scotland’s Pentland Firth and the 300 kW phase 1 of the Nova Innovation Ltd Bluemull Sound project. Both arrays have plans for further expansion in the coming years. In 2017 the wave energy sector has also seen good progression on the structured innovation approach to wave energy development, with many successful testing programmes completed including the Danish Floating Power Plant (FPP) project and the Norwegian Wave-EL project. In addition to this, we have seen many useful international collaborations develop, particularly between the USA and Europe. However, globally we are still waiting on clear market signals for wave and tidal projects. Such market signals are vital for the industry to progress towards commercialisation.
In terms of the OES, 2017 saw the publication of our Vision for International Deployment for Ocean Energy, targeting 300 GW of installed capacity worldwide by 2050. Two new OES tasks were launched in 2017 on Stage Gate Metrics for Ocean Energy and Numerical Code Validation for Tidal Energy. Additionally, a new study on the Cost of Energy was included as a continuation of the work completed in Task 11. For 2018 we also welcome two new vice chairs: Annie Dallman from the USA and Yann-Hervé De Roeck from France.
Finally, I’d like to thank Jose Luis Villate for all of his excellent work as chairman and vice-chairman over the last number of years. Many thanks also to our Executive Secretary Ana Brito e Melo for all of her hard work in putting this report together.
