UK Tidal Power Projects To Share $35 Mln Grant

Six promising marine energy technologies will share 22 million pounds ($35.04 million) of UK government funding to speed up deployment of full scale prototypes, the Carbon Trust said on Tuesday.

The independent company set up by the government to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy hopes the funding will help make marine energy technologies ready for mass deployment by 2020 and keep Britain’s lead in the fledgling industry.
It has selected Atlantis Resources, Aquamarine Power, Hammerfest Strom UK, Marine Current Turbines, Pelamis Wave Power and Voith Hydro to receive funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

“Generating electricity from the UK’s powerful wave and tidal resource not only plays a crucial role in meeting our climate change targets but also presents a significant economic opportunity for the UK,” Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said.

Analysis by the body, set up in 2001 to lead Britain’s efforts to fight climate change, shows a quarter of the world’s wave and tidal technologies are being developed in the UK.

Planet Ark