|
contents | business | |||||||||
| Acciona heads a consortium of 17 European organizations  The Marine project brings together companies, technology centers and universities from twelve EU countries.The project comes under the 7th Framework Program for R&D+i of the European Union with a European Commission contribution of €8.7 million, supplemented by own resources from all participants. The objective is to develop deepwater structures that can exploit the energy from wind, wave, tidal and ocean current energy sources. Acciona Energy heads a European R&D consortium of 17 companies, universities and technology centers from 12 countries with the aim of establishing a technological basis to ensure the viable and competitive integration – on a single deepwater production platform – of a number of marine renewable energies such as wind, wave, tidal and ocean currents. The project, named Marine Platform (Marine Renewable Integrated Application Platform), has a total budget of 12.8 million euros. It is co-financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (7FP) for Research with a subsidy of 8.7 million euros. From now until June 2014 (the expected completion date of the project) the consortium created around Marine will analyze a wide range of aspects with a view to exploiting the predicted offshore wind power boom in order to integrate this energy source with other marine renewable technologies (wave and currents) on platforms located in deep water (i.e. above 40 meters) several miles off the coast. The group's profile includes leading industries in their respective fields, universities and technology centers. Among the first, headed by Acciona, is DONG Energy (Denmark) – the first offshore wind power operator in the world - and Statoil (Norway), a leader in prospecting for oil and gas in deep water and the owner of the only floating wind turbine installed and operating to date. Other industry participants include Technip (France), Progeco (Italy), Corrosion & Water Control (Netherlands), Bureau Veritas Nederland (Netherlands) and 1-Tech (Belgium). The industrial members are matched by its six academic centers: NTNU (Norway), which has the scientific lead based on its deep knowledge of offshore structures as well as renewable ocean energies, the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom), University College Cork (Ireland), the École Central de Nantes (France), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), and the University do Algarve (Portugal). Three other members are applied technology centers: Tecnalia Robotiker (Spain), Riso DTU (Denmark), and Fraunhofer IWES (Germany). Fraunhofer IWES is also the coordinator of an EU-wide Coordination Action supported by FP7 energy from the same Call which addresses the issue of multi-purpose offshore renewable energy production platforms as a networking project. This action, ORECCA, will be run in parallel with the MARINA R&D project during its first year and a half and close interaction between the two projects will be secured in order to maximize the overall European added value. The total research team mobilized by the project corresponds to more than 30 full-time researchers in 12 European countries dedicated to the project over the next four and a half years. Acciona's ability to lead together such a top-level consortium around the project underlines its international reputation in the field of technological development in marine wind power, and as a leading company in Spain with a firm commitment to these technologies. The Marine project has a clear strategic interest for the European Union, supporting its lead in the exploitation of renewables at world level and its aims to cover at least 20% of its end-user energy demand from renewable sources by 2020. At the same time, being a long-term R&D project, Marine aims to contribute to the longer term European policy objectives beyond 2020, and specifically to the very ambitious aims of creating a carbon-free EU electricity sector by 2050. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Construction News :: home page |