Spain’s autonomous community of Basque Country and Scotland have teamed up to create a EUR-20-million (USD 24.3m) collaborative programme called EuropeWave to support the most promising wave energy concepts.
The five-year initiative is match-funded by the European Commission (EC) via its Horizon 2020 programme, Ocean Energy Europe, which is a partner in the project, announced today.
The new wave energy support programme bets on a “pre-commercial procurement” approach to identify and fund the most promising devices in the field that are developed in Europe. The best performing units will be demonstrated in Basque and Scottish open waters at the end of the programme.
“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,” said Remi Gruet, CEO of Ocean Energy Europe.
The partnership is expected to help achieve the EC’s targets of 100 MW of ocean energy by 2025 and at least 1 GW by 2030.