The OceanSET Annual Report 2022 updates the SET Plan implementation working group for ocean energy (OE-IWG) on progress in the sector in the calendar year 2022.
Member countries continue to support the ocean energy sector through the development of national and regional policies for offshore renewable energy, revenue support mechanisms, national and regional test and demonstration facilities, and funding programmes. However, the ocean energy sector must compete frequently with the mature energy sectors such as offshore wind. Specific policy targets, dedicated revenue support mechanisms and focussed funding programmes would accelerate the roll-out of ocean energy technology.
The report puts forward the following recommendations for the OE-IWG:
Download the report here.
The third annual report provides an overview of the activities performed within each work package in year three of the project, as well as an annual update of progress in the ocean energy sector for the year 2020. This report sets out the results of the third mapping and analysis exercise based on surveys capturing high-level information from Member States and detailed information from developers having devices with a TRL 7 or greater.
The main results of these surveys can be summarized as follows:
> Download: D7.5 – 3rd OceanSET Annual Report
Dissemination and communication activities are a core part of the OceanSET project. Among these activities, one dissemination workshop per year is planned to ensure a wide dissemination of the key findings presented in the annual report. The second dissemination workshop was first planned as a side-event of ICOE 2021 to benefit from the presence of the target audience and therefore maximise impact. However, the overall conditions were not entirely satisfying and it was instead decided to organise a webinar in close collaboration with ETIP Ocean, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Ocean Energy. Indeed, the first webinar, which was very successful, was organised with ETIP Ocean. The e-worshop was scheduled for 26 May 2021 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM CEST.
The workshop was organised to provide an update on the European Ocean Energy sector, based on recent information on costs, technologies, revenue support and other facts across European countries as presented in the second annual report produced by the OceanSET project. After presenting the OceanSET project and the second annual report key findings, presenters gave an update on the new European Commission targets for the Ocean Energy sector before offering a vision of the sector in 2030. The webinar ended with a Q&A session and lasted a total of 1 hour and 6 minutes.
The webinar was a success with 121 participants (105 unique persons) out of 147 registrations. Almost half of the audience belongs to the industry sector, which means that the original target audience objective has been achieved. Another important aspect is that 41% of the participants came from the academic sector. Government sector and inter-governmental institutions represented 10% of the audience. Beyond the number of attendees, the participants’ interest was reflected through the time spent in session. 65% of them attended the webinar for over an hour and 24% of them for a duration between 40 minutes and one hour. Overall, these figures are very much similar to the first webinar’s statistics. The number of questions asked during the Q&A session is also significant. Not all of them could be answered due to a lack of time. A dedicated document that lists all the questions with the appropriate answers was prepared. The recording and the slides of the webinar are available on the OceanSET and ETIP Ocean websites.
> Download: D6.9 – Report on the second dissemination workshop
This second annual report provides an overview of progress in the ocean energy sector in 2019 and the range of the activities undertaken in each OceanSET work package. Key findings from the annual data collection are presented below:
An urgent need still remains to reduce the time necessary for permitting and consenting in order to favour and develop a competitive ocean energy industry in Europe. Some Member States and regions expressed a desire for establishing local test facilities that would appear to replicate an existing provision in another Member State or region. An alternative approach to addressing this common need may be to improve and enhance support for cross-border access to test facilities. Further work is required in every Member State to develop an appropriate understanding of the current supply chain provision, the requirements of the ocean energy sector, and the actions necessary to close the gaps which may exist.
> Download: D7.4 – 2nd OceanSET annual report
Dissemination and communication activities are a core part of the OceanSET project. Among these activities, one dissemination workshop per year is planned to ensure a wide dissemination of the key findings presented in the annual report. The first dissemination workshop was originally planned for June alongside with Seanergy, an international event dedicated to offshore wind and ocean energy. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, this event has been postponed by one year. As the European sanitary situation does not allow the organisation of any event and travelling is strictly limited even within Europe, it has been decided to organise a webinar in close collaboration with ETIP Ocean, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Ocean Energy. The e-workshop was scheduled for 7 May 2020 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM CEST.
The workshop was organised to provide an update on the ocean energy sector, based on recent information on costs, technologies, revenue support and other facts across European countries as presented in the first annual report produced by the OceanSET project. After presenting the OceanSET project and its surveying activity, presenters discussed the conclusions from the annual assessment of the EU ocean energy sector and gave an update about the pre-commercial procurement programme for wave energy. The webinar ended by a Q&A session. It lasted a total of 1 hour and 18 minutes.
The webinar was a considerable success with 156 participants. Almost half of the audience belongs to the industry sector, which means that the original objective has been achieved. Another important aspect is that 40% of the participants came from the academic sector. Government sector and inter-governmental institutions represented 9% of the audience. Beyond the number of attendees, the participants’ interest was reflected through the time spent in session. 63% of them attended the webinar for over an hour and 19% of them for a duration between 40 minutes and one hour. The number of questions asked during the Q&A session is also significant. Not all of them could be answered due to lack of time. A dedicated document that lists all the questions with the appropriate answers was prepared. The recording and the slides of the webinar are available on OceanSET and ETIP Ocean websites.
> Download : D6.6 – Report on the 1st dissemination workshop
The OceanSET project was developed to support the delivery of the Ocean Energy Implementation Plan (IP) of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan). Achieving the technology development actions identified in the IP will require significant financial support.
One of OceanSET work package is assessing the financial requirements for each of the eleven technology development actions, identifying where gaps exist in the funding requirements, and the resources and financing approaches that can bridge the gaps. This report is the first step in that process, establishing a clear understanding of the scale and nature of each technology development action, and the financial requirements of each action.
The recent publication of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda has refreshed the understanding of the priorities for ocean energy sector and has updated financial requirements estimates, particularly for the IP’s Technical Actions. Both the SRIA’s assessment and analyses undertaken within this OceanSET task indicate that the initial IP budget estimates underestimate the financial requirements for the Actions 1.1 to 1.4.
The IP’s estimated budgets for the Financial and Environmental Actions are found to adequate, generally. A limited assessment of the Financial Actions 2.1 and 2.2 is presented here as both are the subject of ongoing feasibility studies to be reported in later deliverables.
Clarity is provided on the objectives of some Actions although it is noted that further clarity is required in others.
> Download: D3.2 – Financial requirements for SET Plan
This first annual report provides an overview of progress in the ocean energy sector in 2018 and the range of the activities undertaken in each OceanSET work package. Key findings from the annual data collection are presented below:
• Six Member States (out of 11) have an ocean energy policy.
• Ocean Energy received €26.3M funding from Member States in 2018.
• 90 ocean energy projects were funded by Member States in 2018, two-thirds of which are supporting wave energy devices.
• Twelve ocean energy projects, operational in 2018, were identified as TRL 7 or above.
• Three Member States consented wave or tidal projects in 2018.
• Test sites enabling demonstration can be found in almost all of the Member States.
• The supply chain in most Member States is considered robust.
At times, accurate information on the performance and costs of the different technologies has been difficult to assess via the surveys undertaken, as developers were unwilling to share this level of critical information. This issue will need to be resolved if progress in cost reductions and increased power output in the sector is to be measured precisely.
> Download: D6.5 – 1st OceanSET annual report
The OceanSET Data Management Plan (DMP) is a key element of good data management. The DMP describes the data management life cycle for the data to be collected, processed and/or generated and made available by this Horizon 2020 project. As part of making research data findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable (FAIR), the DMP will include information on:
> Download: D6.2 – Data management plan
The plan for exploitation and dissemination of results (PEDR) of OceanSET is the reference framework for evaluating the impact of project activities. It corresponds to the deliverable D6.1 which is a public deliverable of the OceanSET project, produced in the context of WP6, Task 6.1. The objective of “WP 6 – Communication and dissemination” is to establish a strategy and implement an action plan for an optimised communication and dissemination of the project outputs, helping to ensure implementation of the SET Plan IP in the ocean energy sector. “Task 6.1 – Plan for exploitation and dissemination of results (PEDR)” aims to clearly explain the exploitation, dissemination and communication strategy of the project results by listing audience target groups, setting out main messages, determining the channels and tools that will be used and presenting concrete actions that will be carried out throughout the project and presenting how their effectiveness will be evaluated. The main intention of the OceanSET project being to collate and disseminate information and that this information be open source and available for public good use, there is no plan to exploit the project information other than in the sense of maximizing communication and dissemination actions to the benefit of the project goals.
> Download: D6.1 – Plan for Exploitation and Dissemination of Results
Overall, a core focus of the OceanSET project is the completion of a total of three annual discovery exercises, with the objective of building up a detailed picture of the status of the ocean energy sector and its progress over the three years of the OceanSET project. The OceanSET project will build on the mapping exercise carried out in 2017 by the IWG to set an initial baseline and understand the Policy, Environmental, Technical and Financial activities that support the Ocean Sector in each Member State.
Under the Ocean SET project, the plan is to complete this mapping exercise of the Member States supports and activities each year for the duration of the project, to identify any gaps in the MS activities and to provide guidance for local programme development in line with the Implementation Plan. This particular work package is tasked with developing metrics to monitor the progress of the funded projects in the OE sector. The baseline mapping analysis carried sought a total figure for funding available within each Member State for the development of the sector.
This work package has sought to enable the Implementation Group to map data below that level and to seek metrics for each project funded at Member State, Agency and Developer level. The purpose of these metrics is to collect more granular data each year and to be able to compare, year on year the progress of projects and programmes in each Member State.
> Download: D5.1 – Metrics For Ocean Energy Sector
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