One of Scotland’s green energy pioneers has been rewarded for his contribution to ocean energy after scooping the Saltire Prize medal.
Allan Thomson, who founded Aquamarine Power nine years ago, was named winner of the award at the Scottish Renewables conference in Edinburgh.
The award, part of the £10million Saltire Prize challenge, was established to recognise key contributions to wave or tidal power generation, and counts Pelamis founder Richard Yemm and energy leader Stephen Salter among its previous winners.
“I have been privileged to work with some brilliant engineers and scientists during my career in wave energy,” said Thompson.
“Even today the commitment to innovative and creative problem-solving at Aquamarine Power has made the Oyster concept possible. It is really these people I am representing.
“At Aquamarine Power they have made tremendous progress, and have proven the survivability of two full scale Oyster devices over numerous winters at sea. I’d like to thank their whole team who continue to tackle with passion and imagination the challenges a new technology brings.”
Mr Thomson founded Aquamarine with the aim of commercialising Oyster wave energy technology – with two full-scale devices now in operation at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney.
Prior to founding the firm he set up the world’s first wave energy firm to develop a grid-connected energy device. Wavegen’s Limpet unit was installed on Islay in 2000.
The award, in its fourth year, was presented by energy minister Paul Wheelhouse, who hailed the work Mr Thomson had done over the last quarter-century.
“As one of the early pioneers with over 25 years of dedicated service to the industry, his commitment to the wave energy sector is unsurpassed,” he said.
“He founded Scotland’s first wave energy company, Wavegen, in 1990 and went on to create Aquamarine Power, one of our Saltire Prize competitors, bringing Oyster wave power technology to the commercial market.
Mr Thomson was not present to collect the award, designed by Orkney jewellers Ortak, in person, with Aquamarine chief executive Martin McAdam receiving it in his place.
Scottish Renewables chief executive Niall Stuart said the success of Scotland’s offshore renewables industry was down to the work of Thomson and his colleagues.
“Scotland’s world lead in the development of technologies to harness wave and tidal power is down to the vision and ambition of a handful of individuals like Allan Thomson,” he said.
“Allan is another worthy winner of this unique accolade, with the outputs of his work there for all to see with Aquamarine Power one of the leaders in the race to harness the power of the seas to generate renewable electricity.”
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