Abstract
The world faces increasing energy demands and the urgent need to transition towards sustainable and lowcarbon energy sources to mitigate climate change impacts. Both Europe and the Pan-American region are endowed with vast marine energy resources, offering a promising pathway to achieve these goals. Recognizing this potential, Bluespring has initiated four strategic projects, funded through European programmes and aimed at advancing marine energy technologies, promoting collaboration, and addressing key challenges in the sector. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of these projects, focusing on their methodologies, results, conclusions, and the potential for knowledge transfer to support marine energy development in the Pan-American region.
1) OTP: Assessment of the impact of tidal power extraction from the Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier through the evaluation of a pilot plant [1],
2) ENCORE: Energising coast with offshore renewable energy focussed on de-risking four solutions: tidal stream, river current, offshore solar and wave energy [2, 3, 4],
3) OFFSHORE FOR SURE is a new project, that builds on ENCORE and aims to integrate technologies in offshore wind farms, adding energy storage and smart maintenance strategies to tidal, wave and offshore solar solutions,
4) SEAWORTHY is a project lead by offshore test facilities and research institutes. The main goal is to implement certification services through a series of test campaigns at six locations in Europe to validate test capabilities of test facilities to de-risk solutions for multi-use.
The first two projects have been wrapped up and the latter two have recently started.
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