The government has today formally launched its Marine Renewables Proving Fund, inviting wave and tidal energy developers to bid for £22 million in new grants designed to accelerate the commercial development of marine energy technologies.
The fund, which was announced in July as part of the government's renewable energy strategy and will be managed by the Carbon Trust, aims to help marine energy developers get their technologies to a stage where they can be installed, at which point they can apply for further financial assistance from the Marine Renewables Deployment Fund.
The government faced criticism last month from Conservative shadow energy and climate change secretary Greg Clark, after it emerged that none of the £50 million Deployment Fund had yet been distributed. Clark said that the government was guilty of providing over 20 times more subsidies to the coal industry than it has delivered to the marine energy sector.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said that the new Proving Fund would help marine projects "get off the drawing board and into the water, taking them a vital step closer to full scale commercial viability".
The launch of the new fund completes a good few weeks for the marine energy sector, after the Carbon Trust announced that it has awarded £500,000 from the deployment fund to marine energy firms Pelamis Wave Power and Marine Current Turbines to help them develop more cost effective means of installing their technologies, and the Department of Business and Skills unveiled plans to create 1,500 engineering graduate placements to support the sector.
According to recent research from the Carbon Trust, a quarter of the world's wave energy technologies are already developed in the UK, while the marine energy sector has the potential to contribute £2 billion a year to the country's economy by 2050, employing 16,000 people in the process.
In related news, the government announced that it is currently working on a new Marine Action Plan that will be published early next year and will detail the steps the industry needs to take to ensure the wider roll out of wave and tidal technologies.
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