Marine energy companies to get funding boost from Carbon Trust

Tidal and wave power developers encouraged to thrive as Britain aims to become centre of marine energy industry
Alok Jha, Green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 00.05 BST
Two of the UK's leading marine energy companies will receive a boost today from the Carbon Trust, with grants of £400,000 to help scale up their technologies and bring them closer to commercial reality.
Marine Current Turbines (MCT), developer of the SeaGen tidal power device, and Pelamis Wave Power, which makes a wave-energy converter that looks like a giant snake, will share the money to design and build more efficient ways to install their machines. Installation can account for up to half the cost of a project and the Carbon Trust says will delay more widespread use of the marine technology unless costs are brought down.
Wave and tides could provide a fifth of the UK's electricity needs, according to the Carbon Trust. It found that the UK was home to around a quarter of the world's emerging wave technologies and that Britain should be the "natural owner" of the global wave power market with the possibility of an industry worth £2bn a year by 2050 and up to 16,000 direct jobs. The government has also recognised wave and tidal as a promising area - in the recent white paper on energy, ministers allocated around £60m for the development of the sector.
"We're beginning to recognise [marine] as an important sector," said Stephen Wyatt of the Carbon Trust. "You need an energy mix in the UK for renewables and wave and tidal energies will play an important role in that. Both in terms of de-carbonising the grid but also the economic opportunities it represents. If we create a buoyant wave and tidal business in the UK, that's also an export opportunity for us."
Pelamis has designed a 180 metre-long "snake" that rides waves to generate electricity. Each device has the potential to make 750KW of electricity and the first commercial installation of four devices was made off the coast of Portugal last year. Its £250,000 grant from the Carbon Trust will be used to tackle the problem of manoeuvring the machines into position, several miles off the coast. Specifically Pelamis will invest in a remotely operated vehicle, so that the boat carrying the devices out to sea can be smaller. The company hopes the new technology will make the projects quicker, cheaper and safer and thereby reduce the overall cost of the resulting electricity.
"This project will allow more machines to be installed more often and more cheaply as we will not be as reliant on good weather conditions and specialist boats for the operation," said Beth Dickens of Pelamis Wave Power.
MCT will spend its £150,000 on an experiment to test out a remotely operated underwater drilling platform which could install foundation piles into the sea bed. That means the main turbine can be installed later as a single unit and will also require fewer and less expensive support vessels. The SeaGen devices have already been in operation at Strangford Lough and, if the remote drilling technology works, it will be used at the next MCT project, a 10MW tidal farm planned for early next deade near Anglesey and which would use seven SeaGens, in partnership with RWE npower renewables.
Both companies have had their problems in the past year: the first wave farm using Pelamis, off the coast of Portugal, fell victim to the global economic downturn after the collapse of its majority owner, Australian-based infrastructure giant Babcock & Brown. And MCT's project in Strangford Lough suffered technical problems with snapped blades during the test phase. Despite this, the Carbon Trust considers the two devices "front runners" in the marine energy area.
Carbon Trust director of innovations, Mark Williamson, said cutting the price of wave and tidal technology was critical. "Our analysis shows that the UK is already leading the world in wave energy. If we can bring down the costs of deploying this technology, we will be able to generate marine energy on a scale that will help meet our 2020 renewable target and deliver significant economic value as well."