Testing infrastructures across Europe have come together in an EU-funded marinerg-i initiative to form an integrated approach for delivering tidal, wave, and offshore wind projects.
The €2 million marinerg-i project aims to develop both scientific and business plans addressing governance, legal, financial and strategic issues related to offshore renewable energy, which will facilitate its inclusion in a 2020 European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap application.
The initiative, launched on Wednesday, March 15, 2017, will also seek to standardize best practice, improve efficiency, and create an e-infrastructure blueprint to facilitate remote access and enable improvements in data management.
The project, coordinated by the Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy (MaREI) at University College Cork Ireland, will run until 2019, bringing together 13 partners in 12 European countries with significant testing capabilities in offshore renewable energy.
Jimmy Murphy , Marinerg-i Coordinator, said: “Our vision is to ensure that marinerg-i will accelerate the research, development and deployment of offshore wind, wave, tidal and combined energy technologies and maintain Europe as a global leader in this industry.”
According to MaREI, it is expected that marinerg-i will be positioned to strengthen European scientific and engineering expertise and foster innovation in offshore renewable technologies by consolidating investment on infrastructure and expertise across Europe.