European ocean energy set to become "a massive export market"

As #COP29 gets underway, I've been reviewing a recent report from ETIP Ocean entitled “Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Ocean Energy”. ETIP, the European Technology & Innovation Platform for Ocean Energy, enables ocean energy experts to share knowledge and identify solutions to progress the ocean energy sector.

The report suggests that by 2050, ocean energy could deliver 100 GW of highly predictable capacity, providing 10% of Europe’s current electricity consumption. Additionally, the global ocean energy market is estimated to be worth €53bn per annum by 2050, so as global leaders in ocean energy, European companies are in a great position to “help build a new strategic zero emission export industry”.

The ETIP report identifies six Challenge Areas which the ocean energy sector has confirmed as requiring investment in the period 2025 to 2030 in order to maintain Europe's position as world leaders, as shown in the figure below.

Source: ETIP

Each of these Challenge Areas contains a number of Priority Topics, as set out below:

Source: ETIP

The report identifies a number of common principles that apply to these multiple challenges and priorities, one of which is “Respect the protection of company IP”. This is unsurprising, since the report also highlights that "delivering SRIA activities is expected to require almost 200 projects with a total budget around €1.4 billion. The contribution from private funding is estimated at around 40% of the total, and there needs to be active engagement with the private sector, including established energy companies, to realise these investment opportunities".

While private investor confidence is boosted by grant funding and by schemes such as the UK government's Contracts for Difference, which provide long-term revenue certainty, investors also need to be sure that the technology in which they are investing is protected with a sound intellectual property strategy. To this end, a number of the companies discussed in the ETIP report - such as Wavepiston, Minesto, Orbital Marine Power, Corpower, Havkraft, Mocean Energy, and Hydroquest - already have substantial IP portfolios covering their key technologies.

In the race to #NetZero, valuable renewable technologies are likely to become ever-more attractive to private investors. At present, Europe has installed more wave and tidal energy than the rest of the world combined, and so innovative European companies are already looking at exporting their ocean energy technologies into international markets. However, as the ETIP report notes, other countries such as the US and China are catching up, so if European companies wish to maintain their place as market-leader, innovation and deployment in Europe will need to be accelerated.

Can intellectual property help accelerate the race to net zero? Visit our Energy Transition hub to find out.