News / Large scale marine renewables by 2030
SHETLAND could produce many hundreds of megawatts from marine renewables by 2030 thanks to the foresight and enthusiasm displayed by energy giant Vattenfall, the local authority and Shetland Charitable Trust.
That is the view of Veijo Huusko, managing director for ocean energy at the Swedish multinational, the fifth largest energy company in Europe.
On Thursday, during the Dynamic Shetland conference, he praised Shetland Islands Council and Shetland Charitable Trust for joining a partnership designed to turn marine renewables into a fully fledged industry.
The partnership, signed on Tuesday, will initially focus on the exchange of expertise between the partners, but also offers the potential for investment into marine renewables at a later stage.
Mr Huusko said: “At the moment we are concentrating on the 10 megawatt Aegir wave farm to the west of Shetland.
“We will start to deploy Aegir by 2015 if we know that an interconnector is being built to be able to link into it once it is operational.
“The partnership document doesn’t state anything about Shetland Islands Council investing at this point.
“Our hope is that any investment possibilities later on will bring profits to us and to the community.”
He predicted that it would take another 20 years for marine energy to develop into a “real industry” that could be compared to where the wind energy industry is to date. Small projects however, such as Aegir, could become profitable by the turn of the decade.
Looking further into the future, he added: “In Shetland alone there could be generation of hundreds of megawatts if everything works accordingly, but it depends on the political support and the grid connection, as one interconnector will not be enough.”
Charitable trust chairman Bill Manson described the partnership as a “generational opportunity” for Shetland, adding that everybody involved was “passionately enthusiastic” about the future of marine energy in Shetland waters.
He called for the interconnector to be built as soon as possible as otherwise many renewable projects would either be “stillborn” or suffer serious delay.
SIC development committee chairman Alistair Cooper wants the local community to be at the forefront of investing in and benefitting from renewable energy.
“I believe that wave and tidal is probably ten years away from becoming commercially viable; there is a reward there to be won and I want Shetland to be at the heart of it.
“The community (the council, the charitable trust and local businesses) will not invest into marine renewables until such time that we know we have a proven technology,” he said.
The two day conference, organised by the council’s economic development unit and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, also discussed small scale renewables including the ground breaking NINES project which is being developed to increase the local grid’s capacity for renewables.
A similar event could well be hosted again in a year or two. This first conference has been organised as a result of the success of Shetland’s joint stand at the All Energy conference, in Aberdeen, in May this year.
The conference was a public event but delegates had to register.
Become a member of Shetland News
Shetland News is asking its many readers to consider paying for membership to get additional features and services: -
- Remove non-local ads;
- Bookmark posts to read later;
- Exclusive curated weekly newsletter;
- Hide membership messages;
- Comments open for discussion.
If you appreciate what we do and feel strongly about impartial local journalism, then please become a member of Shetland News by either making a single payment, or setting up a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
Already a member? Sign in to hide this message.
