Source: MIKEL ARRAZOLA
The Minister of Industry, Innovation, Trade and Tourism, Bernabé Unda, said that marine energy is a strategic bet, "beyond its condition of renewable and respectful with the environment", since "Euskadi also wants to take advantage of its industrial capacity to become a technological pole of renewable energies of reference on a global scale".
The Basque Minister spoke in this way on the occasion of the inauguration, at the BEC of Barakaldo, of the International Conference on Marine Energy ICOE 2010, which brings together more than 600 delegates, international experts and leading companies in the different modalities of use of energy from the oceans.
Unda has described the ICOE 2010 as "a unique opportunity" to share knowledge, weave collaboration networks and advance in the "common challenge of valuing new sources of renewable energy", while highlighting that its celebration in the Basque Country "visualizes" its "emerging role" in this field.
In this sense, he highlighted the "two important projects" that are being developed in the Mutriku wave power plant, which is expected to be launched at the end of 2010 in its testing phase, and in the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (bimep) of Arminza, whose commissioning has been scheduled for the second half of 2011.
Both initiatives will allow, in the words of the counselor, to learn to "take advantage of the energy of the sea".
In this line, he explained that, until now, existing technologies "have been very efficient when it comes to taking advantage of energy to move in fluids", both in the air and in water, but "now we try to do the reverse". "With wind energy it has been achieved and now this step is missing, which must be with it, which is the use of ocean energy to produce electrical energy," he added.
Bernabé Unda explained that "the potential is there, but we are still in the beginnings to get that performance" and stressed that "Euskadi has committed" in this field "making the necessary infrastructures" "so that the models can be tested, so that these prototypes can be used, to see which of them has more efficiency over time".
In this line, the Basque minister has insisted that "we are at the beginning of a technological career, and the important thing is to be in it".
On the other hand, Unda, which has pointed out that the Basque Country has become "a pole of attraction" for thousands of surfers from all over the world, has pointed out that the development of marine energy will take "very much into account" other uses of the sea such as fishing, navigation, leisure and sport.
PROJECTS IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY
Based on existing estimates, the energy use potential of the waves on the coast of Biscay and Guipúzcoa can supply around 10 percent of the Basque energy demand and would avoid the annual emission of between 1.1 and 1.54 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
In this area of action, eve has promoted the two "pioneering" projects of Mutriku and Armintza. In the case of Mutriku, taking advantage of the construction of the new shelter dam, a plant has been incorporated to use wave energy through the technology of "oscillating water column". This plant, with 300 kW of power and 16 turbogenerator groups, is the first with a multi-turbine configuration in the world.
In Armintza, a wave converter testing and demonstration area will be launched off its coast. With 20MW of generation capacity, it aims to become a world reference facility in the wave energy sector and facilitate the development of an industrial and knowledge sector in this discipline in the Basque Country.
In addition to the public initiative, in this community, companies and research centers have other initiatives in the development of the energy use of the oceans, such as Oceantec, a pilot project promoted by Iberdrola together with Tecnalia based on a gyroscopic collector. Iberdrola Ingenieria, together with 19 Spanish companies and 25 research centres, leads a consortium that will develop an R&D&I project on ocean energy with a budget of €30 million.
For its part, the technological corporation Tecnalia, in addition to its collaboration in Oceantec coordinates the PSE-MAR project, is a member of the management team of the European project of the 7th CORES Framework Program for the development of wave energy components, and participates in the European project Eavetrain2 for the training of young researchers in this field.
LATEST TECHNOLOGIES
The third edition of the ICOE has been structured around five plenary sessions and 18 parallel sessions, which will include 90 presentations by international experts in the field of marine energy. Among other personalities, the president of the ocean energy section of the International Energy Agency, John Huckerby, and the president of the European Ocean Energy Association, Alla Weinstein, as well as representatives of Alstim, DCNS, EDF, Iberdrola or Statkraft will be present.
Simultaneously, the BEC will have stands of the main attending firms in which they will show the latest technologies for the energy use of the oceans.
Its objective is to promote the establishment of collaboration networks between companies and R&D centers "in the face of the take-off of a new and powerful industrial sector", according to its organizers.
Based on the figures provided by the Congress, it is estimated that in 2050 the electricity production from marine energy – which includes waves, tides, currents, temperature gradients and saline – could reach 645 TWh, equivalent to 100 nuclear power plants.
Europe, they add, has "enormous potential" for marine energy and is "in a position" to reach a capacity of 3.6 GW of installed capacity in 2020 and about 188 in 2050, which would generate 26,000 direct jobs and 14,000 indirect jobs in 2020 and 314,000 direct and 157,000 indirect in 2050.
The greenhouse gas emission savings would be equivalent to 2.6 million tons of CO2 on the first date and 136 million tons on the second. As for the estimated investments, they reach 8,500 million euros by 2020 and 451,000 million by 2050. (EUROPA PRESS)
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