Building Ocean Energy for Europe

November 11, 2016 - The Ocean Energy Forum handed over to Commissioner Vella the results of 18 months of work on the future of ocean energy in Europe: its strategic roadmap "Building Ocean Energy for Europe". The headline recommendation is the need for a 250 million euro investment package and a 70 million euro insurance fund to attract investors and offset risk. The report sets out a viable strategy which would see 10% of Europe's electricity delivered by wave and tidal energy by the year 2050. Commissioner Vella said "Ocean energy is not just good news for our climate. It's also great news for job creation. We are speaking about a potential global market of up to 53 billion euros a year. Thanks to today's roadmap, we have a convincing path for investors to follow". Ocean energy is abundant, geographically diverse, renewable and reliable. It could contribute to the EU's objective of reaching at least 27% of renewable energy by 2030 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95% by 2050. Today's roadmap is a comprehensive blueprint for building up ocean energy in Europe – from the initial R&D all the way to the industrial roll-out. The roadmap also identifies several priority areas for technological progress, concentrating on improving the technology's performance and reducing the costs related to installation and logistics services. Based on current and planned deployments of wave energy converters and tidal stream devices, the sector is expected to move to the pre-industrial phase by the mid-2020s.