The marine and tidal energy sector in Scotland is being offered £6 million to push out new wave and tidal power devices, on top of a £50 million R&D fund for all offshore energy.

The £6 million is from Scottish Enterprise, which is launching a second round of funding from its WATERS £13 million fund to help reduce the cost of bringing wave and tidal technologies to commercial application.

First Minister Alex Salmond said the programme will continue to work with “enterprise agencies, SDI and the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney" to "help generate £4bn for Scotland's economy by 2020".

The fund will be open to businesses that are legal entities registered or planning to register in Scotland, including Scottish subsidiaries of overseas companies.

Leading developers Aquamarine Power (with its Oyster wave power device), Open Hydro (tidal current devices), AWS Ocean Energy (which has a doughnut-shaped wave energy converter in Loch Ness and the Cromarty Firth) and Ocean Flow Energy (another marine energy device) have already benefited from funding in a previous round.

Today's news follows last Friday's announcement from the UK Technology Strategy Board that it will base its ‘Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’ innovation centre for offshore renewables (wind, wave and tidal) in Glasgow’s International Technology & Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ).

This is a UK-wide consortium comprising the Carbon Trust, National Renewable Energy Centre (Narec), and Ocean Energy Innovation. It will receive up to £10 million per annum over five years (£50 million) from the Technology Strategy Board. 

Inspiring tomorrow's industry workers

Meanwhile, just south of the border, in an effort to make sure that the skills needed for the emerging offshore renewable energy industry will be available, renewable energy developers have begun teaming up with schools and communities. 

Forewind, a consortium of RWE, SSE, Statkraft and Statoil, which is a development partner for the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm zone, has launched a programme for schools that will support teachers to develop classroom resources about the job opportunities that will be available for their students in the locality in offshore wind power.

Stephen Logan, ICT and business studies teacher at Malet Lambert school in east Hull, said: "It is crucial young people are aware of the career opportunities in the area. It will raise aspiration and ambition and give them the opportunity to see what they can do.

"The offshore wind and renewables industry could have a massive impact on this area and it could be their future career for a decade or 20 years."

Forewind's general manager, Lee Clarke, said the schools, from Scarborough in the north to Withernsea in the south, are in the area where the first proposed offshore wind farms are planned to connect with the national grid.

Dr Clarke said: "It made sense for us to focus on the area around the onshore infrastructure for our first development – Dogger Bank Creyke Beck – to ensure the nearby community is aware of the potential opportunities offshore wind may bring."

The project, called the Champions For Wind careers education programme, was launched last week at conference in Hull with speakers from Forewind, The Crown Estate and Renewable UK and the Humberside Engineering Training Association (Heta).

The teachers are enthusiastic. Sarah Bone, deputy head teacher at Hessle High School, said: "I want to raise awareness and aspirations about what the industry can offer. The industry is facing problems that there aren't yet solutions for and our students could be the ones to come up with them."

Community power

The message that communities can come up with the answers to our looming energy supply crisis is reinforced today by a report that urges the government to radically overhaul the ‘closed shop’ energy market by unleashing the community energy sector.

ResPublica, a think tank founded by Phillip Blond, whom David Cameron has described as being "at the cutting edge of progressive thinking about public services", is warning that failure to recognise and back the community sector will have serious consequences on the Government’s climate change, emissions and fuel poverty targets.

They're calling for local people to be empowered to move beyond the status of passive users and consumers and instead become producers and distributors of their own energy supplies.

The report, Re-energising our Communities: Transforming the energy market through local energy production, which is backed by Friends of the Earth, recommends opening up the energy market, and highlights examples of best practice elsewhere, citing Germany where one-quarter of all renewable energy is community owned.

In the UK, it points to successful schemes in the Isle of Eigg off the west coast of Scotland, Torrs Hydro Ltd in New Mills, Sheffield, and Fintry Renewable Energy Enterprise in Stirling, which is it says could be replicated across the country.

Ed Mayo, ResPublica Fellow and Director General of Co-operatives UK, said: "The beauty of renewable energy that is co-operatively owned and community-level is that it solves the twin issues of social acceptance and economic efficiency".

The report’s authors say the government wants to reform the market and increase community production, but that its current approach is doomed to fail.

And they criticise the regulator Ofgem, because its rationale "largely ignores the social and economic potential of community energy".

They say that Ofgem's proposal in its Retail Market Review for suppliers to auction off 20% of power generation in order to help new suppliers enter the market "will not help community organisations" because they can't afford to buy bulk supplies, and this approach "will not change the type of energy that is generated”.

They are recommending that instead, a new hybrid company structure should be included in the upcoming consolidated Co-operatives Bill, launched last month by the Prime Minister, and that the policy should build upon existing coalitions, such as the Low Carbon Communities Network, or the recently established ‘coalition for community energy’ spearheaded by Co-operatives UK, Friends of the Earth, Forum for the Future and others.

Local authorities have a role, too, to work with communities, local asset holders and the energy industry to highlight underused assets and space that could be utilised for community energy projects, they add.

_{Story: David Thorpe, News Editor}