Renewable demand

Predicting the three trends that will be the strongest in the renewable energy and marine energy industries in 2015, Mr Jansson said mature technologies in renewable energy, like solar and wind energy, have reached a technical and commercial breakpoint where they compete with convetional energy sources without subsidies.

“At the same time, big players like the Rockefeller fund disposes of its fossil energy assets. This development proves that there is very big potential for marine renewable energy to achieve the same tipping point – the demand for renewable and reliable energy will be large enough,” he said.

Mr Jansson also said 2015 will see industrial globalisation, as more and more countries establish national programmes and research centres in marine energy. According to Mr Jansson, the latest countries to launch marine energy initiatives are Chile and Singapore.

Lastly, the Minesto CEO expects large investment in marine energy as many tidal energy companies are exiting their R&D phases and are now making large investments in marine energy parks.

“These are big players like DCNS, Alstom and Siemens. The tidal energy industry is in now in a position comparable to the wind energy industry in the early 90s. The political climate and the parallel development of other enabling technologies (e.g. sensors and control technologies), are believed to give marine energy an even steeper development curve,” Mr Jansson concluded.

Minesto has developed a new conectp for tida power plants, ’Deep Green’, which is based on a new principle for electricity generation from tidal currents.

By Rachael Doyle