Abstract
This document is a technology roadmap: it provides a guide for mobilising the wave and tidal energy community in the UK down a deployment pathway towards a target of achieving 2GW installed capacity by 2020.
The roadmap is aimed at providing a focused and coherent approach to technology development in the marine sector, whilst taking into account the needs of other stakeholders. The successful implementation of the technology roadmap depends upon a number of complex interactions between commercial, political and technical aspects.
Although this roadmap is technically focused it also considers policy, environmental and commercialisation aspects of the marine energy sector, in order to display and put in context these wider influences.
The roadmap is aimed at technology developers, project developers, policy makers, government bodies, investors (public and private), the supply chain, consultants, and academics, in order to aid coherent progression of the sector.
Although the roadmap has been written with the UK community in mind, it is expected that its core technical aspects will be applicable internationally, if modifications for a particular country’s policy, regulation and infrastructure context are taken into consideration.
It should be stressed that the roadmap is a living document: it will evolve and be maintained over time according to technology advances, changes in policy, an understanding of the environment, and the changing overall landscape of the sector.
The roadmap has been arrived at as a result of consultation with the community at 4 workshops held since April 2005, as well as over 40 one-to-one interviews. Overall a Battelle methodology has been used in the construction of the roadmap, with a Delphi method used in the one-to-one interviews. This roadmap document builds upon a number of UKERC documents and the UKERC marine UKERC Marine Renewable Energy Technology Roadmap UKERC 4 landscape document, all of which are to be found on the UKERC website, www.ukerc.ac.uk. Finally although the UKERC hosts this roadmap, its ownership lies with marine sector itself, who have fed into it during the consultation process.