OCEANERA-NET launches second R&D funding call

 
The OCEANERA-NET initiative has launched a second joint call 2016 for collaborative research in ocean energy sector.

The aim of the OCEANERA-NET joint call 2016 is to promote the development and competitiveness of the ocean energy sector by supporting projects involving research, technology, development and innovation (RTDI) activities, and developing, demonstrating or validating new and innovative technologies of ocean energies, including tidal energy, wave energy, tidal and ocean currents, salinity gradient and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

The scope is needs-driven research addressing a technology area, as indicated above, and in addition, projects may address environmental and financial/legal issues.

The call topics for the OCEANERA-NET second joint call 2016 are as follows:

1. Development and standardisation methods and tools for ocean energy site characterisation, environmental monitoring and project planning, with a focus on decreasing uncertainty around array performance and energy yield.
2. Development of tools and solutions for the design, structural optimisation and performance assessment of ocean energy devices and arrays, taking into account materials, manufacturing, installation, operation, maintenance and environmental requirements.
3. Extraction of new or additional value from existing technologies, projects and/or datasets, or the application of innovations from other sectors to ocean energy.
4. Design, testing and standardisation of critical components for ocean energy, with a clear focus and quantifiable impact on improving reliability and survivability, and on ultimately reducing the levelised cost of energy of devices.
5. Demonstration and validation of technological developments in a test or real sea environment. Specifically, pilot tests for demonstrating and validating full scale, or reduced scale, prototypes of ocean energy devices, components or any other equipment considered as complementary to these systems.
6. Design and validation of approaches/methods/tools to reduce installation, operation and maintenance and recovery costs for ocean energy devices and arrays.

OCEANERA-NET will support transnational consortia with a minimum of two independent eligible organizations from at least 2 countries participating in the call.

Balanced consortia with high added value of transnational collaboration and SMEs or large industry involvement are encouraged.

Public funding in the amount of €6.4 million will be provided by 12 national/regional funding organizations from 5 EU countries – Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden – and 6 EU regions.

Each funding organization finances the respective companies or research organizations of their country/region participating in the research consortium.

Eligible applicants, budget limits, financial rates and eligible activities vary between countries/funding organizations, so potential applicants must check national rules and contact their respective funding organization prior to submitting an application.

Funding will be granted for a maximum of three years.

The application process follows a two-stage submission process, consisting of a first pre-proposal stage for eligibility check with a submission deadline set for March 30, 2016, and second full proposal stage entailing both eligibility check and international evaluation by independent experts with the deadline set for July 5, 2016.

After the idependent external evaluation, the Joint Call committee will announce final funding decision by the end of 2016.

OCEANERA-NET is a four-year coordinated action financed under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, running from 2013 to 2017. It is a network of 16 national and regional funders and managers of research and innovation programmes, from 9 European countries.

The objective of OCEANERA-NET is to coordinate funding programmes between European countries and regions to support research and innovation in the ocean energy sector.