Tidal and wave power forecasts downgraded

Bloomberg New Energy Finance has revised down its forecasts for global tidal stream and wave power deployment in 2020, by 11% and 72% respectively, as the technologies suffer technological setbacks and investor fatigue.

Bloomberg said the emergence of marine renewable energy technologies is taking longer than hoped, due to project setbacks, fatigue among venture capital investors, and the difficulty of deploying devices in the marine environment. This latest forecast represents a downward revision from the figures of 167MW for tidal stream and 74MW for wave that Bloomberg New Energy Finance published a year ago.

Angus McCrone, senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “Governments in countries such as the UK, France, Australia and Canada have identified tidal and wave as large opportunities not just for clean power generation, but also for creating local jobs and building national technological expertise.

“That continues to be the case, and we will see further progress over the rest of this decade. But caution is necessary because taking devices from the small-scale demonstrator stage to the pre-commercial array stage is proving even more expensive and time-consuming than many companies – and their investors – expected.”

The last 12 months have seen a number of wave power companies fail or falter, Bloomberg said. However, the Renewable Energy Association remained upbeat. Head of Marine Renewables Dr Stephanie Merry said: “BNEF is right to highlight the challenges facing the marine sector at present. First and foremost, these are engineering challenges. The UK has never shied away from such challenges – if we had, we wouldn’t have led the world on building sewers, bridges and pumped hydro storage. The marine renewables sector is continuing the extraordinary legacy of UK engineering.

“Once arrays of multiple devices are proven at scale, which is just around the corner, we will also be able to tackle the finance challenge. There’ll be less perceived risk for investors and the economies of scale on the larger projects will make them economically competitive with other forms of low carbon generation. These technologies can deliver reliable clean power from our seas for this generation and several to come.”