News this week

BWEA’s sixth annual event dedicated to wave and tidal stream energy took place in Bath this week. Over 450 delegates and 32 exhibitors attended the conference, including EMEC. The issues of Environmental Impacts, Grid and Infrastructure, Development and Deployment, and Major Marine Power Delivery, were the items under discussion at the presentations. Of major note were speeches from Lord Hunt (Minister for Sustainable Development and Energy Innovation) and Trevor Raggatt (Deputy Director Energy Innovation at DECC), who announced the foundations of a Strategic Environmental Assessment for Marine Energy in England and Wales.

Jenny Norris, Research Manager, recently attended the first detailed regulatory meeting in relation to the streamlining of consents in Edinburgh.

The EMEC RAG group met again last week by phone conference. This well attended event was facilitated by Jenny and our Research Director, Professor Ian Bryden.

The infrastructure works at the Billia Croo wave test site continue, preparatory to the deployments due in the next few weeks by Aquamarine Power Ltd and later in the year, Ocean Power Technology.

The Tidal Site at the Fall of Warness has been busy with Tidal Generation Ltd continuing their deployment and OpenHydro continuing their testing programme.

Visitors in the last week have included the North of Scotland Industry Group and also a PhD student from the University of Bergen. We are looking forward to receiving a large number of visitors from many areas of the world around the time of All Energy.

If you are intending to be at the All Energy exhibition in Aberdeen on the 20th and 21st May this year, then please come and see the EMEC stand at O2 in the Orkney area and introduce yourselves! www.all-energy.co.uk