Abstract
The Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub and the Policy and Innovation Group of University of Edinburgh has jointly published four reports investigating the potential of ocean energy (focusing on wave and tidal stream) in the UK. This series of analysis has indicated that in order to achieve the socio-economic and power system benefits associated with 6GW of wave and 6GW of tidal stream, an optimum combination of policy support in the form of technology push and market pull mechanisms are crucial. Furthermore, our analysis in the latest report demonstrates that technology push funding support for research and innovation (R&I) is crucial to accelerate cost reduction of energy generation, thereby reducing the total amount of market pull funding required. This analysis demonstrates that a relatively large portion of UK funding is focused on early-stage research with limited funding in higher TRL stages particularly in the tidal stream sector, that is crucial for commercial deployment of the technologies.