News this week

EMEC welcomes plans for a new offshore renewables hub announced by the UK government earlier this week. The headquarters of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult will be based in Glasgow at Strathclyde University, with its operational centre based at the National Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) in North-East England. This is a significant milestone for the UK, and demonstrates a determined and binding commitment to accelerate the development of the UK offshore renewables industry. The ORE Catapult will focus on technologies for wave, tidal and offshore wind energy and is designed to bridge the gap between university research and full scale commercialisation. The bid team that prepared and submitted the successful proposal to the Technology Strategy Board was a 3-way partnership between Ocean Energy Innovation (a consortium of Scottish partners represented by Scottish Enterprise, of which EMEC is a member), Narec and the Carbon Trust.

Also looking to drive forward the development of the offshore renewables industry is the MaRINET initiative which is reminding developers that there are now less than three weeks before the first call for applications for funding to access EMEC’s wave and tidal scale testing facilities closes. Click here for more information.

And finally, Happy 165th Birthday to Thomas Edison, one of the world’s greatest inventors. Edison has had a profound influence on the world in which we live and work today, introducing the world’s first public electricity supply, and is known as the inventor of the light bulb. Edison found the concept of renewable sources of energy fascinating, and was even experimenting with wind turbines and electric cars at the turn of the twentieth century. A number of inspiring Edison quotes spring to mind, I’ll leave you with just one:

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”
Thomas Edison [1847-1931]