2022 saw the UK strengthen its position as one of the leading nations in the research, innovation and development of the ocean energy sector, according to the 2022 UK Ocean Energy Review released by the University of Edinburgh’s Policy and Innovation Group. This report details how the maturation of the sector continues to move at pace, with tidal stream looking to move from single device deployment to arrays and the wave sector seeing increased tank testing and deployment of prototypes. With regards to the policy landscape, recent government energy strategies, both at a UK and devolved level, make explicit reference to the untapped potential of the ocean energy sector for energy generation and energy security. This is only bolstered by the success of market pull mechanisms such as the Contracts for Difference scheme, which has delivered increased sectoral confidence as a number of device developers were granted contracts.
In collaboration with Wave Energy Scotland and Supergen ORE Hub, the University of Edinburgh’s Policy and Innovation Group has released their 2022 UK Ocean Energy Review. The report is an expansion of the UK chapter of the IEA-OES Annual Report 2022 and summarises the progress of the ocean energy sector, recent policy developments and provides an update on the status of current projects, test sites and deployed devices over the last year. The Ocean Energy Systems (OES) under the International Energy Agency (IEA), is an organisation advancing development and deployment of ocean energies in more than 20 countries. This report outlines the UK’s supporting polices for the ocean energy sector, including strategy at a national and devolved level, market incentives available to the sector and updates to public funding programmes and major funding decisions in 2022. This is followed by an update regarding the progress of research and development at key R&D institutions and major updates from a range of key R&D projects. This report then provides updates from the major UK test centres and demonstration zones across the country, followed by a compressive review of current and planned deployments of array and demonstration projects that were ongoing throughout 2022. Finally, the report concludes with a summary of relevant national events held in the UK last year and the ones that are expected to be held this year.
The document is available to download here.
This report has been collated and edited by Kristofer Grattan and Henry Jeffrey from the Policy and Innovation Group at the University of Edinburgh. Leading organisations including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Scottish Government, Marine Energy Wales, European Marine Energy Centre, Wave Energy Scotland, Orbital Marine Power, Nova Innovation, SIMEC Atlantis Energy, Mocean and many more, contributed to producing this report.
