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Inyanga Marine Energy Group is one of seven European partners, including offshore renewable energy and Earth Observation specialists, which have teamed up for the BLUE-X project.
Together, these partners will develop a satellite-based decision support tool to accelerate offshore renewable energy deployments. This is the first blue energy Horizon Europe project funded by the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).
More than 75% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the energy sector. The revised ‘Renewable Energy Directive’ of 2023 raises the binding target to almost double the share of renewables within the EU until 2030.
Blue renewable energy sources such as offshore wind, offshore solar, wave and tidal energy have a high and mostly unused potential in times of a changing global energy policy.
In 2020, the European Commission set the ambitious targets of 300 GW of offshore wind and 40 GW of ocean energy across all the European Union’s sea basins by 2050. However, achieving these calls for thorough and time-consuming MetOcean, geophysical and environmental campaigns.
Six use cases across Europe will ensure a BLUE-X solution in line with the user demands of offshore renewable energy developers and providers. These cases will cover various blue offshore energy sources.
Fiammetta Diani, Head of Market Downstream and Innovation at EUSPA, states that BLUE-X aims to help the acceleration of the energy transition in the European Union; “Increasing the share of blue energy is a key building block for reaching the goals of the Green Deal. Scaling up the use of Copernicus satellite data can support the rapid and fact-based decision-making needed.”
Richard Parkinson, MD of Inyanga Marine Energy Group, said; “We will be contributing our unique expertise in tidal energy to help in the development of BLUE-X. Europe has access to some of the world’s best tidal resources, but these are currently underutilised.
“By providing key decision-making information for developers, BLUE-X will help to accelerate commercialisation of tidal energy, and help unlock the full potential of this valuable energy resource. We expect this pioneering tool to have a powerful impact, helping to reduce project timescales and costs.”
For upscaling offshore renewables, BLUE-X will provide key data useful for all five steps of the blue energy lifecycle: site assessment, planning, construction, operations, and decommissioning. Kim Knauer of EOMAP, leading the BLUE-X consortium, stated; “Our mission is to give valuable decision-support to offshore renewable energy projects. We aim for a tool that is easy to use and offers quick access to key data on the coastal areas in question.”
