Canada’s marine renewable energy sector has the potential to become highly competitive in the global marketplace – serving domestic and global power needs. Canada’s Marine Renewable Energy Technology Roadmap defines the approach that will see projects around the world use Canadian technologies and expertise. The Canadian sector, focused on gaining experience with marine renewable energy solutions and technologies, and on finding ways to accelerate the formation of a supply chain for commercial-scale activity is maintaining this industrial development focus.
There are no ‘small projects’ when operating in the challenging marine environment: development, installation, operation and retrieval involve high costs and high risks. Mitigating these challenges will be critically important to the long-term success of Canada’s marine renewable energy sector. Doing so requires one thing above all else: collaboration.
Nova Scotia’s commercial-scale, shared infrastructure ‘incubator’ initiative in the Bay of Fundy, the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE), has created a world-leading, grid-connected, demonstration centre. Reducing costs and risk while accelerating the achievement of operational scale, the FORCE approach is clearly working.
Canada has committed more than $75 million in federal and provincial support to marine renewable energy development projects in the last five years; $100 million will be invested in phase 1 of FORCE; installations of technology arrays could see upwards of $500 million invested in the coming five years.
The Renewable Electricity Regulations in Nova Scotia, the Clean Energy Act in British Columbia, and Quebec’s Plan Nord are all helping to move Canada’s marine renewable energy sector towards a scale of interest.
In July 2011, the Government of Nova Scotia announced its plan to create the ‘winning conditions’ for development of an in-stream tidal energy sector that will serve Nova Scotians for generations to come; an industrial strategy, 65 MW by 2015, another 300 MW in 5 to 10 years.
More than 100 experts contributed their ideas through a series of three workshops to produce a national vision and strategy for Canada’s marine renewable energy sector through this Roadmap. This process has demonstrated the growing convictions that marine renewable energy is an inevitable and sustainable addition to the world’s clean energy future.
Join us as we move forward and act decisively to build and maintain ‘Advantage Canada’.