Mixed Greens: Marine energy raises money, tugboats at the ready

Atlantis makes stock exchange listing

Atlantis Resources, an Australian founded company that makes tidal energy turbines, has raised Stg20 million ($37 million) from a stock exchange listing, and funds and grants from European institutions. Atlantis, now based in Singapore and with Morgan Stanley as its biggest backer, raised Stg12 million in the IPO on London’s Alternative Investment Market in a move that now values the company at Stg72 million.

“We chose AIM because people in the UK market are familiar with the renewables sector and there is good support,” CEO Tim Cornelius, an Australia, told Bloomberg. “People understand the landscape here.” Atlantis will use some of the funds raised on developing the 86MW first phase its  MeyGen project in Scotland, with generation expected early next year and a total project size of up to 398MW.

Atlantis is also working with Lockheed Martin, which is also supporting a 63MW wave energy project in Victoria, is developing the turbine technology. 
“It’s a growth story because we have a global portfolio and it’s a new and emerging market,” Cornelius told Bloomberg.
“From that perspective I think people tend to find it really interesting. It’s not solar and it’s not wind.”

Oceanlinx gets ready for tow

Meanwhile, Australian wave energy developer OceanLinx plans to begin a four-day voyage to tow its new GreenWave wave energy converter – billed as the world’sfirst 1MW wave energy machine to be deployed – into place at its new installation at Port MacDonnell  in South Australia on Sunday. The device was unveiled last October and will be the of a series of units deployed to demonstrate the technology’s reliability in a wide variety of sea conditions, and its economics.

The device is 24m long by 21m wide and weights 3,000 tonnes. It has no moving parts below the water line and requires no mooring or anchoring.  It will sit 4kms offshore. Oeanlinx says the $7m project will be the first of its kind to be commissioned in the world. The demonstration unit received $4m from the Federal Government in a bid to make the project ready for market.

Lawyers slam emissions reduction fund

The National Environmental Law Association has slammed aspects of the Abbott government’s emissions reduction fund, with some parts being labeled as “dangerous”. NELA’s submission to fund’s green paper says there is particularly concern about the manner of so called ‘crediting’ baselines before the ‘compliance’ baselines have been determined, or even before the entities who will be covered by these compliance baselines have been finalised’.  It suggests the government should delay funding certain projects until the details of the compliance mechanism have been finalised or clarified.

NELA is also critical of a proposal  to keep the benchmark price for auctions confidential, says the five year contract term will mean the projects will not attract bank finance. It says it is most  concerned about the proposal for a one year delay in implementing the “safeguard mechanism”.  It says a one year delay will only intensify the scale of the challenge of achieving the target particularly if the current target of 5% is no longer adequate and a higher target (of 10% or 15%) is deemed to be appropriate.