Its integrated nature and co-ordinated approach will accelerate the research development and deployment of offshore wind, wave, tidal and combined energy technologies and help maintain Europe as a global leader in this industry. In addition, MARINERG-i will strengthen European, scientific and engineering excellence and expertise as it’s combined facilities represent an indispensable tool to foster innovation across a large variety of MRE technologies and systems and through all key stages of technology development (TRL’s 1-9).
The MARINERG-i concept developed from the MaRINET FP7 project which clearly demonstrated the benefits of uniting Europe's leading renewable energy research organisations. MaRINET consisted of 45 infrastructures operated by 36 research centres across Europe. It had measurable success in terms of establishing an advanced community of testing infrastructures and enabling integration whilst supporting research and development in this sector. It was very well received by the infrastructure institutions, the MRE industry and national funding agencies that are now supporting the MARINERG-i concept.
The purpose of this INFRADEV proposal is to undertake development work which will ensure MARINERG-i is effectively positioned to attain the criteria necessary for being successful in a future ESFRI roadmap application. MARINERG-i made an application to the 2016 roadmap and was identified as an emerging RI of EU significance. Since making the bid to the ESFRI 2016 roadmap, the consortium has continued to evolve and collaborate, culminating in the submission of a proposal for a second MaRINET project (MaRINET2) under Horizon 2020 [Infra-IA].
This proposal takes on board the comments and recommendations provided in feedback from the ESFRI 2016 reviewers and has also analysed and updated the positioning of the MARINERG-i concept based on the current status of the sector. In this context it is proposed to:
- Broaden the number of member states involved
- Create a design study and scientific plan
- Develop a business plan including governance, legal, financial and strategic issues
- Secure further national support from partners
- Create and agree an implementation plan that will bring the proposal to the roadmap.
The consortium comprises of partners from countries that originally provided funding and political commitment for the MARINERG-i application to the ESFRI 2016 roadmap, namely Ireland, France, UK, Spain and Portugal, together with additional partners: Norway, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. All have joined together to complete the studies needed to enable multilateral executive decisions to be made for the realisation of this pan-European research infrastructure for Marine Renewable Energy, and become nodes of MARINERG-i's distributed infrastructure.
The project is financed by EU H2020.
Read more on the project website