Aberdeen University is at the heart of a £5m investment aimed at keeping the UK top of the class for offshore renewable energy.
The deal, involving a national consortium of universities, is aimed at keeping the UK’s “competitive position” in the field and “address any technical, environmental and interdisciplinary challenges” the sector could face in future.
The initiative is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and brings together the related research areas of wave, tidal and offshore wind.
Dr Beth Scott from the University of Aberdeen will be a co-director of the new EPSRC ORE SuperGen Hub, the first academic consortium to combine research on wind, wave and tidal renewable industries.
Dr Scott said: “I am absolutely thrilled to have this incredible opportunity to collaborate directly with such a range of extremely talented and dedicated engineering colleagues in helping to design and bring forward a sustainable approach to large scale extraction of renewable energies from our oceans.
“This position brings with it a massive amount of responsibility to help facilitate the research interactions we need now between engineers, industry and ecological and social science communities.
“Working together with a very wide range of excellent colleagues is how we have gotten to this point of cooperative research and even wider and more connected networks of multi-skilled people is what will make the ORE SuperGen Hub approach a success.”
ORE Supergen will be led by Professor Deborah Greaves OBE, Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Plymouth, working alongside academics from The University of Aberdeen, University of Edinburgh, University of Exeter, University of Hull, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, University of Southampton, University of Strathclyde, and the University of Warwick.
Professor Greaves added: “Offshore renewables is an exciting and rapidly expanding field, and we expect it to play a significant role in providing energy for the UK and globally. The UK is already at the forefront of research in this area, and the ORE Supergen Hub will provide leadership for the scientific community and enable it to continue to build on that expertise.
“Our advisory board will help ensure we are also meeting the requirements and addressing the challenges being faced by industry.”
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