Carnegie wins more European funding towards Spain wave energy project

Sunday, September 24 2023

General – Wave Energy

Close on the heels of its last funding success, Australian listed wave power company Carnegie Clean Energy has secured another €1.2 million to push its Spanish plans forward.

The once-troubled wave power promoter won the money through Renmarinas Demos, the Spanish government’s marine renewable energy funding program.

Spain wants 40 to 60 megawatts of ocean energy – wave and tidal – deployed by 2030.

Earlier this month, Carnegie beat 35 other companies in a EuropeWave tender to build a roughly 400kW version of its CETO wave energy converter in waters off the Basque Country.

At the time Carnegie CEO Jonathan Fiévez said their competitive advantages in the tender, which took two years, were across a range of key technical criteria including cost (LCOE), performance, reliability, availability and survivability.

The EU program, designed to support the European Commission’s goals of 100MW ocean power by 2025 and 1GW by 2030, came with a $6.3 million grant.

Carnegie’s plan is to have the Aguamarina project running by 2025.

The initial funding gave Carnegie’s local subsidiary a one year stint with wave energy support organisation Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP); the latest funding extends that by another year.

The CETO technology was first invented in Perth in 1975 and uses a submerged, buoy-like device tethered to the seabed that oscillates with the waves and converts the waves’ energy into electricity.

Fiévez is grateful for the extra support from the Spanish government to commercialise the technology, after years spent developing the CETO concept.

“We see the longer operational window and additional collaboration with BiMEP creating additional opportunities to not only improve CETO and de-risk the activities but also to contribute more broadly to the marine energy sector, especially in Spain,” he says.

“We’re already underway with the Achieve project but we’ll continue to seek ways to ensure the core project delivers more value through enhancement and extension. What our team is achieving with this technology and the pathway toward commercialisation is now being recognised internationally. This award is yet another validation of what we’re developing and how it can be applied to achieve the target of a clean energy future.”