14 DAY TRIAL // Recent news from Scotland informs us that this country has some very big plans concerning the development of its green energy industry, with a total of ₤7.9 million (about €9.96 million / $12.5 million) to be invested in developing new technologies aimed at harvesting wave and tidal power as efficiently as possible.
Seeing how, as we reported only yesterday, Germany has decided to once again spend money on coal and build 23 new plants that rely on this resource to generate power, it comes as good news that other countries are not yet willing to give up on the idea that renewables can indeed meet the electricity demands of their citizens.
As reported on the official website for the Scottish government, the person who broke the news of these major investments in renewables was the country's Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who supposedly commented on the importance of this new green-oriented projects as follows:
“By supporting a range of wave and tidal technologies at various stages of development towards commercialization and the goal of large-scale sea-powered electricity generation, we can stimulate innovation, investment, job creation and help protect the planet for future generations.”
As you probably already know, the dynamics of Scotland’s surrounding waters makes them especially suitable for the harvesting of wave and tidal power. However, the very same dynamics makes the task of installing and operating marine energy technologies a rather tricky one.
Therefore, Scotrenewables Tidal Power Ltd, AlbaTERN, AWS Ocean Energy, Nautricity and Oceanflow Development have all been chosen to work on solving the aforementioned issue, and hopefully come up with prototypes which can tackle this renewable energy source more efficiently than other technologies now available on the market can.
As Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon puts it, “The WATERS 2 funding sends a further clear signal that Scotland – already blessed with some of the world’s greatest concentrations of marine energy resource and with unrivalled offshore energy engineering expertise – will continue to provide the optimum research and investment environment for developers and commercial partners.”