Scotland's marine energy ambitions in flux amid funding doubts
Tidal is key to Scottish marine energy as funding ebbs away
The prospects for marine energy driven by the tides and ocean waves have ebbed and flowed for years in Scotland, long regarded as a world leader.
Last year, a report from Edinburgh University claimed that such projects in the UK could deliver more than £8 billion in economic benefits to the Scottish economy and support 15,000 jobs by 2050 “if we retain our leadership position until then”.
This week, however, it emerged that the Scottish government had cut funding for Wave Energy Scotland (WES), a pioneering initiative set up in 2014 to address the technical challenges in wave energy.
This uses machines placed in the sea that convert the motion of waves into kinetic energy. So-called tidal stream energy is generated by devices that either sit on the ocean surface and capture the ebb and flow of tides, or sit on the seabed and use turbines equipped with blades.
Yet marine energy involves tricky engineering and high up-front costs. The supply chain is patchy. Investors have committed, then lost faith with each cycle as the machines haven’t delivered. Meanwhile, the emergence roughly 15 years ago of cheaper forms of renewable power in the form of offshore wind undercut the investment case for wave and tidal.
The latest company to be hit is Edinburgh-based Mocean Energy, set up in 2015. Six years later it successfully tested a device in Orkney at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), the world’s first facility for demonstrating wave and tidal devices, set up by the UK government in 2003.
The Scottish government says its decision on WES – into which it has ploughed £70 million to date - was made “in the context of an agreement for the company being self-sustaining beyond a certain point” and amid a “challenging fiscal envelope”.
Mocean’s founder, an American called Cameron McNatt, admits that wave energy “does have a bad rep given its previous failures”. One of those was building machines to supply power to the grid instead of developing more manageable niche applications at sea.
READ MORE: Grangemouth and Mossmorran no more: Why deindustrialisation isn't the way to hit net zero
McNatt tells me Mocean is targeting offshore oil and gas, carbon capture and offshore wind where power needs – such as for repair and maintenance - can be met by an ocean-bound platform with battery storage.
The company has contracts with customers to fund pilots and is appealing for a continuation of WES funding so these can be allowed to bear fruit. “We are on the cusp of commercialisation and all we are asking for is to honour the contracts. This gives us a chance,” McNatt says.
Tidal energy has more of a track record. Last November, 20.9MW of new tidal stream capacity was awarded in the UK government’s annual contracts for difference (CfD) subsidy auction, known as AR7, bringing the total UK pipeline to over 140MW.
A boost to the industrial feasibility of tidal in Europe came last week when the French government included commercial tenders for 250MW of tidal energy capacity to be awarded by 2030 in its latest energy plan.
And only yesterday, tidal received a further boost when EMEC was awarded £15m from the UK government to expand its test facilities to enable the demonstration of tidal energy arrays.
“In a financially tight environment we’ve got a long way to go before wave can be done at scale commercially,” says Professor David Ingram of Edinburgh University’s Institute for Energy Systems. “But providing the CfD contracts can be fulfilled and the machines can get in the water I think we’re closer to being there with tidal.”
One of three main tidal projects in Scotland, MeyGen, owned by AIM-listed Ampeak Energy, has since 2018 operated four turbines in fast flowing waters in the Pentland Firth. Power is supplied to the grid.
Another project run by Nova Innovation, in which Scottish National Investment Bank has invested £6.4m, has been generating electricity from seabed turbines in Shetland since 2016.
Then there is Orbital Marine Power, an Orkney-based company founded in 2002 that for the past five years has operated a yellow machine the length of a Jumbo jet fuselage which Orbital claims is the world’s most powerful tidal turbine. In December, the company received a £7m from venture capital firm PXN Ventures, Scottish Enterprise and other existing shareholders, allowing the completion of financing for 13 new turbines, split between the UK and Canada.
Andrew Scott, Orbital’s chief executive, argues that tidal helps deal with the intermittency issues in less predictable wind and solar power. “We sit in that tapestry of solutions that's going to be required to help us really get some of the more difficult parts of the decarbonisation puzzle solved,” he says.
However, obstacles remain. In October, modelling by the state-owned National Energy System Operator found that developing large-scale tidal power stations in the UK would likely push up electricity costs due to subsidies and other costs.
And while tidal benefited in AR7, it received a smaller budget than in previous years. Analysts at ORE Catapult, the UK’s innovation centre for offshore renewable energy, think this is a sign of the UK government prioritising more established technologies as it strives to meet its “Clean Power 2030” targets.
Meanwhile, the industry awaits the findings within months of a “Marine Energy Taskforce” set up last June, led by energy minister Michael Shanks.
Among other challenges facing marine energy it is exploring investment mechanisms to support commercial deployment.
“We have all of the tools to deliver a successful tidal industry in the UK,” says Sue Bartlett-Reed, executive director of the UK Marine Energy Council. “What we need is the right regulatory policy and confidence signals to crowd in investment.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.