Engineering Challenges of Delivering Offshore Renewable Energy
The annual conference of the Society of Maritime Industries takes a look at the emerging offshore renewable energy market which will see a huge investment with an expected capital spend of GBP70 billion for offshore wind farms alone. Entitled “Investing in UK Maritime Renewable Energy - Engineering Challenges & Business Opportunities”, it will be held in the historic Assembly Rooms, Bath on Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 February 2010.
Governments across the world have set themselves ambitious targets for the generation of energy from renewable sources. In the case of the UK, 30% of our electricity needs must come from renewable sources over the next 20 years and to speed the growth towards this target the Department for Energy and Climate Change has launched an Office for Renewable Energy Deployment. Maritime renewable energy projects off our long coast line will form a substantial part of this target and a number of these are in an advanced stage of planning notwithstanding many of the engineering challenges that have still to be resolved.
The time to deliver energy from offshore renewable sources has now arrived and this conference will seek to portray those challenges and map out the many business opportunities which are already emerging for the maritime engineering sector. The South West region of England, blessed by geography to exploit this emerging energy resource, has been amongst the most innovative and active in progressing these exciting new concepts and is the lead sponsor of the conference.
Papers will be presented by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, The Crown Estate, European Environment Agency, UKTI Energy, Scottish Power Renewables, BP Alternative Energy as well as key players from the industrial and academic renewable energy community.
