Abstract
The goal of certification for any technology (or product) is to bring it to market by submitting it to a certification body for an assessment. The objective for such an assessment is to provide businesses with assurance that their technology conforms to a set of codes or standards it claims to meet. An added benefit for adopting this approach also ensures that any inherent technical (and potentially financial risks) have been independently identified, quantified and suitably mitigated. The acceleration of marine energy technologies globally makes it one of the fastest growing energy-production industries and hence with an abundance of designs and techniques now available, the need to ensure international standards are adopted and practiced consistently to support the trading of components and systems, can never be overestimated. With this in view, the IECRE have developed a conformity assessment system to ensure these marine energy technologies can be uniformly assessed to provide confidence to insurers, investors, regulatory authorities and end users that they are viable, reliable, and efficient in terms of safety and performance. The ENCORE (Energising Coastal and Offshore Renewable Energy) project, funded through the Interreg 2 SEAS programme, works with marine energy technology developers, certification bodies, test laboratories and technical experts to support the development of IEC standards and accompanying certification schemes, by applying these to four user cases and in parallel, to develop a route for commercialisation for technologies and services developed by the project partners.