Western Australia-based wave energy pioneer Carnegie Clean Energy has achieved a major coup in Europe, beating out an international field of 36 contenders to win funding to deploy its CETO wave power generation technology in waters off the coast of Spain.
ASX-listed Carnegie said on Wednesday its subsidiary, CETO Wave Energy Ireland (CWEI), had been awarded the “significant contract” by EuropeWave, a competitive program designed to bring wave power technologies to commercial deployment.
EuropeWave has awarded Carnegie €3,746,531 ($AD6.3million) in funding to deliver and operate a scaled roughly 400kW version of its CETO wave energy converter in waters off the Basque Country by 2025.
Carnegie CEO Jonathan Fievez says the company’s West Australia-originated technology beat out its rivals across a range of key technical criteria including cost (LCOE), performance, reliability, availability and survivability.
“What our team has achieved with this technology is remarkable,” Fievez said.
“This significant contract demonstrates Europe’s commitment to the technology and is recognition of where we are positioned in the race to deliver globally.
“This was a competitive tender which started two years ago from a field of 36 and our CETO technology has now finished with the number one ranking against all rival solutions.
“We’re extremely proud of reaching this milestone on our journey toward wave energy taking its rightful place in the world’s energy mix,” Fievez said.
Carnegie’s proprietary CETO technology – which at the commercial scale comes in units of 1MW generation capacity – uses a submerged, buoy-like device tethered to the seabed that oscillates with the waves and converts the waves’ energy into electricity.
After a choppy run in Australia, including a short foray into voluntary administration in early 2019, Carnegie has shifted its CETO development focus overseas, and particularly to Europe, where there is a target to install 100MW of ocean energy by 2025.
In Australia, with the company’s home base still in Fremantle, the focus has been on a separate technology spun out of its CETO generators, called MoorPower.
MoorPower uses a Power Take-Off (PTO) system that converts the orbital motion of waves into electricity, but rather than using a stand-alone buoy system, the scaled down technology will be designed to be integrated with moored offshore vessels.
Carnegie was in October 2021 awarded funding to install and operate a scaled demonstrator of the MoorPower technology offshore from its headquarters in North Fremantle, Western Australia.
The $3.4 million project is being delivered in collaboration with a consortium of partners including two of Australia’s largest aquaculture companies, Huon Aquaculture and Tassal Group, with $1.35 million in funding from the Tasmania-based Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre.
Fievez says the decision to shift the focus for CETO to Europe came about because “that’s where the support is.”
“The ambitions of the [EuropeWave] program are to really unlock and trigger the rollout of commercial wave energy in Europe,” he told RenewEconomy from Fremantle.
“These are going to be in the water right under the noses of some of [Europe’s] biggest utilities – and certainly investors are very progressive … they want to win the race.”
By comparison, Fievez says Australia – which is only just beginning to play catch-up on offshore wind – has no real strategy for ocean energy and has had a tendency to funnel funding into unproven carbon abatement technologies such as carbon capture and storage over wave power.
“I think it would be a great outcome if the recognition of what we’ve been able to achieve for the EuropeWave program filtered into the Australian stage and really provided a bit of a wake up call,” Fievez told RenewEconomy.
“There are mechanisms to support this kind of technology, but I think we had a period where there was direction away from that kind of support into into carbon capture and storage.
“It’s a great time, now, to kind of adjust that view and support something that’s actually here, as a technology … and a company that’s really been born in Australia.
“We have an amazing resource and we’ve got amazing technology and there’s a chance to be at the forefront.
“It’s not too late,” Fievez adds, “But the door’s closing.”
“The role Carnegie’s CETO technology can play in decarbonisation could be critical to reaching emissions and renewables targets.
“Wave energy can enable 24/7 power at scale.”
For now, Europe and the UK are driving forces behind the commercialisation of wave energy, thanks in part to the European Commission’s targets of 100MW of ocean energy (covering wave and tidal) by 2025 and 1GW by 2030.
Project partners for EuropeWave include Lloyds Register, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hutchinson, Quoceant, Advanced Composite Structures Australia, Julia Chozas Consulting Engineer and VGA.
Carnegie says the Basque project will run from September this year to May 2026, with the CETO deployed from 2025 at the open-water facilities of the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP).
