The Funding Ocean Renewable Energy Through Strategic European Action (FORESEA) project will offer funding to  developers to access the continent’s major ocean energy test facilities.

Developers to receive funding are EMEC in the UK, research institute SmartBay in Ireland Galway Bay, Tidal Testing Centre in the Netherlands, and SEM-REV in France.

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The €11m project will bring major ocean energy test facilities of Europe together in a bid to demonstrate tidal, wave, and offshore wind energy technologies in real-sea conditions.

EMEC's commercial director Oliver Wragg said: “Europe is currently leading the world in ocean energy development.

"The project will bring major test facilities of Europe together to demonstrate tidal, wave, and offshore wind energy technologies in real-sea conditions."

“The FORESEA programme will help cement this lead by stimulating a critical mass of technology development activity, bridging the gap between ocean renewables research and development (R&D) and the marketplace, whilst neatly building on existing European Union (EU) initiatives currently supporting wave and tidal energy technology development across Europe.”

Being a part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the FORESEA project is funded by the Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) programme.

The test centres to be funded will be given support by Ocean Energy Europe, an industry group based in Brussels. The cost of pre-commercial demonstration of full-scale ocean energy technology is significantly high, which prevents the products from reaching the market.

In a bid to resolve the issue, FORESEA will provide a wide range of funding and business development support packages to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5+ ocean energy technology developers.