Australian wave energy to roll into Europe

Carnegie Clean Energy has been awarded a €3,746,531 (AU$6.3million) contract to deliver and operate its CETO wave energy technology in Europe. It is set to be in the water and generating in waters off Basque Country in 2025.

The contract was awarded to CETO Wave Energy Ireland (CWEI), the company’s subsidiary, by EuropeWave, a competitive program designed to advance wave energy converter systems and bring them to commercial deployment in Europe.

Jonathan Fievez, Carnegie CEO, said the contract demonstrates Europe’s belief in wave energy and in the company’s technology.

“We’re extremely proud of reaching this milestone on our journey toward wave energy taking its rightful place in the world’s energy mix,” he said.

According to Fievez, wave energy has almost zero emissions and has potential to fulfil global energy needs.

“Solar and wind are currently doing the heavy lifting when it comes to greening the grid, but the system needs something more predictable and consistent added into the portfolio. When the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, wave energy keeps rolling in,” he said.

The technology is fully submerged in the ocean and invisible from the shoreline.

Carnegie is the owner and developer of the CETO and MoorPower technologies, which capture energy from ocean waves and convert it to electricity. This sector is set to become highly commercial.

Carnegie’s CETO technology is projected to generate electricity at costs comparable to other clean energy technologies when deployed at scale.

Europe and the UK are driving forces behind this commercialisation and by 2050, ocean energy could provide 10% of current electricity needs.

The collaboration with EuropeWave is aligned with decarbonisation goals and will help push the ocean energy sector towards the European Commission’s targets of 100 MW of ocean energy by 2025 and IGW by 2030.

Project partners include Lloyds Register, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hutchinson, Quoceant, Advanced Composite Structures Australia, Julia Chozas Consulting Engineer and VGA. Additional procurement with local contractors, manufacturers and equipment providers will soon commence.

This project will run from September 2023 to May 2026 with CETO deployed from 2025 at the open-water facilities of the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) in the Basque Country in Spain.

Image credit: iStock.com/Philip Thurston