THE U.S ANNOUNCES A $27 MILLION FUND FOR PROJECTS FOCUSED ON WAVE ENERGY.
According to The U.S. Department of Energy, the $27 million fund will be given on research and development projects focused on wave energy.
Recently, the DOE has tried to promote innovation within a sector that has a very small footprint compared to other types of renewable energy.
the DOE told that Tuesday the funding would be used with the purpose of improving wave energy technologies toward commercial viability.
The projects will be selected to undertake at the PacWave South facility located off the coast of Oregon.
Construction of PacWave South has received investments from the DOE and the State of Oregon, among others — began last month and it’s hoped the site will be operated in 2023.
The funding will be divided into three private parts:
- $15 million will be used for the testing of wave energy convertor tech;
- $7 million will be used to research and develop wave energy tech;
- up to $5 million will be allocated to improve wave power converter designs for PacWave.
The DOE suggested: Deadline for Full applications for the funding are in October
Jennifer M. Granholm, U.S. Energy Secretary told that due to wave energy, we had the opportunity to add more renewable power to the grid and deployed more sustainable energy to hard-to-reach communities.
While the money will be received in some quarters, preliminary figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicate that a lot of work will be required if the country is to move away from fossil fuels in any significant way.
The EIA indicated that natural gas and coal’s shares of utility-scale electricity generation in 2020 were 40.3% and 19.3%, respectively. In contrast, the total market share for renewable sources amounted to 19.8%. Developing wave energy technologies is not unique to the United States. For example, Europe is also home to a fledgling region, with several companies now working on a wide variety of systems.
In an example of how wave energy companies are progressing, last month a company called Mocean Energy announced that their Blue X wave machine - 20 meters long and 38 tonnes in weight - had started testing at the European Maritime Energy Center in Orkney, an archipelago located north of mainland Scotland.
in March, some £7.5 million ($10.37 million) of public funding was announced to support the development of eight wave energy projects led by U.K. universities.
While there may be great enthusiasm in some quarters regarding the potential of marine energy, it still has a way of catching up with other renewable technologies such as wind and solar.
Ocean Energy Europe figures show that only 260 kW of tidal stream capacity was added in Europe last year, while just 200 kW of wave power was installed.
Meanwhile, in 2020, 14.7 gigawatts of wind power capacity installed in Europe, according to industry body WindEurope.
