FORESEA Offers Testing for Offshore Tech Applicable in Renewables

The FORESEA (Funding Ocean Energy through Strategic European Action) programme has launched its 4th call for proposals today at the Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference 2017. The call targets technology developers in offshore sectors such as the oil & gas, subsea and shipping industries, which have renewable energy applications.

The call aims to help developers of offshore technologies transition into the renewable energy space by developing new applications for their products. Successful applicants will receive support to test at one of FORESEA’s test centres.

FORESEA is an EUR 11 million project which helps to bring offshore renewable energy technologies to market by offering free access to a network of test centres: EMEC (UK), DMEC (NL), SEM REV (FR) and SmartBay (IE).

Previous FORESEA calls targeted developers of offshore renewable energy technologies, however the 4th call now extends the scope to technology developers in other offshore sectors to help their technologies enter the renewables sector.

Nicolas Wallet, EU Programme Manager at EMEC, said: “With this call, we want to provide a bridge to the renewable energy market for technology developers from other sectors. The market for offshore renewables such as wave, tidal and offshore wind is developing rapidly, while at the same time other offshore sectors such as oil & gas have hit a rough patch. So, diversifying into offshore renewables makes a lot of sense for those developers.

“We’re keen to have that conversation with technology developers, and see if FORESEA can support them to come to one of our test sites.”

The call for proposals is open until 29 June 2018.