The UK is a global leader in Wave and Tidal Energy, both being Renewable Energy Sources, RESs, and both under the umbrella of Ocean Energy. As a world leader UK has long term plans for the commercialization of the technologies which enable the efficient exploitation of the power of the waves and tides.
The theme of the IET Wave and Tidal Conference 2013 is “Towards Commercialization’’ giving the stigma of the necessity for the development of plans for the commercial deployment of wave and tidal projects.
The two Ocean Energy sources, Wave and Tidal Energy, have the potential to enable the UK to cover part of their electricity needs from clean renewable energy sources. The target set by the EU for EU members is for them to cover the 20% of their needs from RESs and tidal and wave energies offer UK this unique opportunity.
This IET conference will take place on April 24th 2013 at Glasgow and aims to explore and analyse the crucial challenges facing Wave and Tidal energy and at the same time provide solutions to these challenges.
As the chairman of the conference states in his message, we are now at the beginning of the road which will lead to us to the commercialization of Ocean or Marine energy as it is sometimes referred. It is stated that with a 120 million sterling pounds investment (about 185 million USD), research will overcome the barriers towards commercialization and unleash the potential of wave and tidal energies.
As stated earlier the event is taking place in Scotland which is considered the hub of Ocean Energy since it is the Scottish waters that we have the most advanced and quite large wave and tidal energy projects.
The keynote speech of this conference will be given by Scottish government officials and will be about the: ‘’Scottish Government policy and strategic objectives for the Wave and Tidal energy industry’’.
The other very well selected topics of the sessions of the conference are:
The electricity market reforms – Pitfalls, positives and pragmatism: during which the presenter will provide ways to get away of pitfalls and get the optimal benefit of feed-in-tariffs.
Opportunities and barriers in the marine energy industry: The 3 different barriers, Environmental, Technical and Financial, involved in marine energy will be analysed and expanded.
Evaluating commercialisation applications: The methods for evaluating commercialisation of applications will be presented.
Marine energy – Investing for the future: Various financing options will be presented so s to attract the private sector and encourage them to invest in marine energy
Marine Energy technology – Crucial areas to cost reduction: This session will identify key elements on the cost curve and present ways to recognize non-technical costs.
Technology management assessment of marine renewable energy: This session will present the results of the maturity investments made within the Wave and Tidal energy.
In addition there will be several sessions presenting the lessons learned and how-to techniques from projects which are already in production such as the Le Rance tidal power plant.
The speakers at the conference will be many well-known professionals and researchers in the area of Wave and Tidal Energy, who present their experiences and forward thinking ideas as to how these RESs will be commercialized.
The benefits of attending the conference are many, as it is with any industry conference. Some of the benefits are:
In order to get the full benefit from this conference the people who will attend should be related to the industry since this is a highly specialized event. The event will be of greatest interest and benefit to professionals in the wave and tidal industry, manufacturers, potential investors, researchers, academia and government policy makers.
Ocean Energy, Wave and Tidal Energy, can contribute to the production of clean and renewable electricity in many parts of the world provided the solutions are cost effective and can justify the investment needed.
Ocean energy together with Hydroelectric energy form the Water energy group of RESs and give us more options for the production of clean energy which will enable us to reduce the CO2 emissions and thus reduce the pollution to the environment.
It is important to have the vision of the commercialization of Wave and Tidal energy communicated to all stakeholders so that they would be aligned to one cause and conferences like the one organized by IET provide the platform for this communication to not only take place but to be discussed and finalized as well.