www.businessweek.com
23 May 2012
Scotland opened an 18 million-pound fund ($28 million) to bids from developers of wave and tidal power technology to spur business in the nascent industry. The Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund will announce successful bids by the end of the year, the Scottish government said in an e-mailed statement today. The fund is part of a 35 million-pound investment by the government over three years. "This new fund will be critical to tackle the next set of challenges and innovate to drive down costs of both wave and tidal power", Stephen Wyatt from the Carbon Trust, which is working with the government on the fund, said in the statement.
Energy from waves now costs about $445 a MW and tidal power $402 a MW, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Those figures compare with the cost of coal-fired power of about $78 a MW. Scotland plans to effectively source all of its power from renewable sources by 2020. The country has the potential to provide as much as 25% of Europe's tidal power, and a 10th of its wave energy, according to the government. Scotland currently gets about 35% of its power from clean energy. Scotland awarded 500,000 pounds of its 70 million-pound National Renewables Infrastructure Fund to support development of a dock near Glasgow as a hub for making clean energy systems.
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