MET-CERTIFIED
Development of International Standards and Certification schemes for Marine Energy Technologies
Priority Axis
Low Carbon TechnologiesSpecific objective
Low Carbon Technologies
Lead partner
Dutch Marine Energy Centre (DMEC)Contact
Begindatum
01/09/2016Einddatum
30/06/2021Project budget
9 284 697 €ERDF amount
5 570 818 €ERDF rate
60%Over
Common challenge
The MET-CERTIFIED project dealt with four main challenges. The first concerns reducing carbon emissions, as, the 2 Seas area has some of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Therefore, there is a need to shift to non-fossil fuel energy generation. The 2 Seas area is blessed with abundant, yet untapped, resources of energy from tides and waves. The second deals with the increased collaboration between test facilities. There were several marine test facilities in operation or under development in the 2 Seas area (IFREMER, DMEC, PTEC, WaveHUB). However, before the project approval, these test centres did not collaborate, for example on consenting issues, best practices for testing, environmental monitoring and certification. EMEC had most experience to share and therefore joined this project from outside the 2 Seas area.
Next, the project sought to take into account innovation capacity. The 2 Seas area has a high density of offshore engineering firms that were looking at marine renewables to diversify their business. There was a need for innovation and cooperation between businesses and knowledge institutions across the Member States to advance the sector.
Lastly, MET-CERTIFIED looked to preserve and protect the environment. At several sites across the area, environmental monitoring was placed to understand the impacts of wave and tidal energy projects on the environment. There was, within the project, great opportunity to share best practices.
Overall objective
Main outputs
Cross border approach
Main Achievements
The project started in 2017 by organising 5 transnational workshops in the Netherlands, United-Kingdom, France and Belgium to raise awareness about certification.
In 2018, project partners hosted a seminar on financing and launched a series of video testimonials about the role of certification to get access to funding. Three pilots were reviewed. Recommendation was produced for all 3 pilots and distributed to the Technical Committees of IEC.
In 2019, experts from project partners organisations advanced several technical specifications and operational documents under the IEC scheme (notably on Technology Qualification and Loads Measurements). Both were published in 2020.
The project was showcased at many events organised either by the partnership (ELBE seminars, IEC annual plenary meeting with over 60 experts from 10 countries at NEN) or external events (2 Seas Mid-Term review, the joint workshop with the OPERA-project hosted during All Energy Glasgow). POM published a study on lessons learnt from other industries.
At the end of the project, partners reached the following extra achievements, such as the contribution to standardisation and certification, the approval of the ENCORE-2 project or the IEC and IECRE publications.
In terms of communication & policy achievements, the Dutch government developed a Roadmap for Energy from Water. DMEC contributed significantly to this process thanks to the MET-Certified project. The partnership presented the project at a conference and a workshop as part of PAMEC 2020 in Costa Rica, leading to new initiatives in Latin America (development of a Letter of Intent). These activities have led to numbers of "target audience reached" exceeding initial targets.
Testimonial
MET-CERTIFIED aims to accelerate the certification scheme under development and is capitalising on several tidal demonstration pilot projects where the devices under test are used to inform the improvements to the marine energy standards.