An Analysis of the Research Landscape and Priorities for Marine Renewable Energy

The formation of a national energy network to provide a more coherent approach to energy research was one of the recommendations to come out of the UK Chief Scientific Officer’s Energy Research Review Report to the Government.

As a result, the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) was established in 2004. UKERC consists of 3 themes: Demand Reduction, Future Sources of Energy (FSE) and Networks (check). A Marine Energy Research Network has been established in the FSE theme, and has the following objectives, which are common to the Europe wide community:

• To develop a research road map to assist technology developers in the successful deployment and commercialization of marine renewable technology up to 2020.
   
• To assess and fill the gaps in expertise required to implement the priorities identified in the road map.
   
• Establish focus groups within the network to implement the road map by applying for external funding.
   
• To consult with all academic, industrial, government and funding bodies in the development and implementation of the road map.

In order to help meet some of these objectives UKERC is collaborating with the Supergen Marine consortium, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Its main objective is to reduce risk and uncertainty for marine energy development. Knowing where the research agenda should be heading  and addressing the gaps in current expertise will contribute to this objective.

Part of Work Package 3 (WP3), “Engineering Guidance”, is tackling this issue, in which data has been collated from 22 one-to-one in depth interviews with academic members of the Supergen consortium. In this paper the authors will show a sample of results showing how these objectives are being achieved and to show how the respective work of UKERC and Supergen results are being used to inform the road-map
process.