Ocean Renewable Energy Needs to Overcome Cost Challenges

From left, Mr Justin Wu, Mr Cameron Johnstone, Mr Bruce Cameron, Mr Drew Blaxland, Mr AbuBakr Bahaj, Mr Stuart Baird, Mr Hardiv Situmeang, Mr David Mark Ingram and Mr Lu Kuan.

Panellists agreed that major cost challenges need to be overcome before ocean renewable energy can become viable when they spoke at the roundtable on The Role of Government in Ocean Renewable Energy and Its Impact to Industries yesterday.

Mr. Cameron Johnstone, Chief Executive Officer, Nautricity Limited said that ocean renewable energy’s (ORE) cost had to decrease by 30% before it could play a bigger role in Asia. He said that current ORE technology costs more than £ 8 million/MW and probably needs to be lowered to £ 3.5 million/MW before technology evolution can take place, which means that realising the potential of ORE could be many years away.

Another barrier was the difficulty of garnering confidence and investments in the technology.

Another speaker, Mr. David Mark Ingram, Representative of Ocean Energy Systems, Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics, Director of Research, The University of Edinburgh said that the costs of machines, installation, operation, resource-technology matching would need to be reduced in order to deliver bankable projects.

Resource-technology matching refers to the adaptation of technologies before they can be deployed at different sites.

Both Mr Johnstone and Mr Ingram men were on a panel that included Mr. Bruce Cameron, Executive Director, Sustainable and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy, Nova Scotia; Mr. Drew Blaxl and, Chief Technology Officer, Atlantis Resources Corporation; Mr. Hardiv Situmeang, Executive Director, ASEAN Centre for Energy; Mr. Justin Wu, Head of Wind Industry Research, Bloomberg New Energy Finance; Mr. Stuart Baird, Operations Director, European Marine Energy Centre and Mr. Lu Kuan, Ocean Technology Strategy and Planning Department, National Ocean Technology Centre, China. Mr AbuBakr Bahaj, Head of Division, Energy and Climate Change Division, University ofSouthamptonmoderated the session.

Should the costs come down, the panellists said, ORE would be able to bring multiple benefits such as growth in the local economy, job creation and increased access to electricity in remote areas.

Research and development would be an important factor to reduce cost, they said and Mr. Lu spoke about how the Chinese Government has established a RMB 600 million fund for the development of ORE projects. Mr. Situmeang said that there were existing funding opportunities for climate change projects under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

By : Koh Hui Shan, Energy Market Authority (Singapore)