The Cofunded Joint Call 2017 was launched with a budget of €16.94m representing €11.27m committed from national and regional research budgets and €5.5m of co-funding from the EC. Funding was available to companies and research organisations across the partner countries and regions – Brittany, Basque Country, Ireland, Pays de la Loire, Scotland, Spain and Sweden – to implement research and demonstration projects. The scope of the call was needs-driven research and demonstration addressing an ocean energy technology area. The participation of at least 1 industrial partner was mandatory and projects involving SMEs were encouraged. There was a focus on demonstration and validation of technologies and approaches to improve performance and reduce costs of ocean energy. Nine collaborative projects were funded under the call, with total funding awarded of €7,747,016. The project partners include 22 companies, of which 19 are SMEs and 3 are large companies. All the projects have been completed.
For the Second Joint Call 2019, the funding organisations allocated funds of up to €6.82m. Six funding agencies from the OCEANERA-NET COFUND Consortium participated - CDTI, FCT, PDL, SCOTENT, SEAI and SWEA. Flanders Agentschap Innoveren en Ondernemen (Belgium) also participated. After review, it was agreed that scope should be similar to the first call - needs-driven research addressing an ocean energy technology area. Following the call, 4 collaborative projects were contracted and are currently being implemented. The total grant committed from funding organisations is €2,323,757. Thirteen companies are involved in these projects, 12 SMEs and 1 large company.
The funded projects are primarily industry-led and all involve technology developers and /or industrial and supply chain companies. With 13 projects funded and a total of 33 different companies participating, alongside leading test centres and research organisations, the targets for the two calls were exceeded. The total private sector funding leveraged was €7,076,788, with further contributions in kind. The projects included leading ocean energy technologies – 4 in wave, 3 in tidal and 1 in ocean thermal, as well as a range of components and sub-systems relevant for specific generation technologies or across offshore renewables, including for offshore wind. T
To promote the Joint Calls to companies and stakeholders across the countries and regions, facilitate the creation of partnerships and publicise the work and results of the projects, a Dissemination and Exploitation Plan was implemented. A range of activities were carried out, including the OCEANERA-NET COFUND website, presentations at conferences, events and webinars, business to business match-making websites, media releases, communication materials and a Projects Brochure. The Final Conference was held during the Seanergy conference in Le Havre, France in June 2022, with 8 of the funded projects presenting their results, participating in panel sessions and discussing future collaboration.
A range of other joint activities were delivered, focused on communication with stakeholders, disseminating the work of the collaborative projects, knowledge exchange and collaboration. The development of the new Clean Energy Transition Partnership also became a focus, with activities to pass on learning from OCEANERA-NET COFUND and coordinate input from the ocean energy sector to highlight research needs and the scale of opportunity.
