Page 18: of Marine Technology Magazine (June 2018)

Matt Hodson, Operations Director, Marine Hub Cornwall oices

There has been a lot of investment within renewables en-

If you look at the national revenue of marine renewables, ergies in Cornwall recently. Can you give the readers a reducing cost remains crucial. Clearly any technology that is sense of the type of activities taking place, and the latest going to be cost competitive needs to have its cost reduced, trends in the marine renewables sector?

and that is leading a lot of activity we are doing here.

There has been a lot of investment from the Marine Hub and our cousins at Wave Hub who are also based in Hayle

Wave and tidal is still an untapped area in renewables that

Marine Renewables Business Park. The Wave Hub facility is

Marine Hub would like to help mature in the coming years. a connected offshore renewable energy testing center. There

What is the biggest challenge to developing this resource and how is this being addressed?

is also testing in Falmouth Bay where we have people look- ing to test nursery devices and we have laboratories at the The biggest challenge for wave and tidal right now is rev-

University of Exeter and Plymouth. All the infrastructure enue support. I think it’s recognised that the technologies in investment is in place and the key message now is that we the wave and tidal industry are still some way away from the are building on that to really focus on market-led activities point that they can become commercially viable. But there enabled by these facilities. In terms of the types of activi- is a huge amount of industrial work that goes on developing ties that are taking place, I can point back to Marine-i. We those technologies and it is a global industry. Marine Hub are seeing real research in risk and cost reducing activities can play our part in the national debate on how we support which are essential to driving down the cost of renewables. those technologies moving forward, but we could also do

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