Neil Kermode of Emec in call for marine energy standards

The adoption of consistent technical standards throughout the global marine energy industry is seen as key to the sector’s development.

Neil Kermode of the Orkney-based European Marine Energy Centre (Emec) said the global industry had to work towards a common technological goal.

He was speaking after a joint industry forum hosted by Emec and Canada’s Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (Force), at which delegates agreed standardised practices for data collection and analysis.

“Common standards, developed by worldwide experience, can only help accelerate the deployment of wave and tidal technologies,” he said.

“In time, wave and tidal technologies will find their markets in dozens of countries and Emec wants this to be as easy as possible, both for the technology developers at Emec and the ultimate customer here or overseas.

“We want a wave or tidal device which is certified at Emec to be immediately marketable in any country, without expensive and time consuming revalidation.”