By Kari Williamson

MaRINET offers periods of marine renewable energy testing at the centres at no cost to participants through funding from the European Commission, supporting technologies such as wave power, tidal energy and offshore wind.

The aim is to accelerate Europe-wide development of marine renewable energy and the funding seeks to remove financial barriers by enabling companies and research groups to access unique world-class European testing facilities outside their own country, which is generally not covered under national grant schemes.

The initiative is set to run until 2015 and the first call for applications is now open. Potential users, who must work in Europe or a country associated to the European FP7 programme, are invited to apply to access this first call.

The marine renewables network consists of 42 testing facilities at 28 research centres in 12 countries.

All participating centres will use common standards, conduct research to improve their own testing capability and provide training to enhance expertise in the field.

Project Coordinator, Professor Tony Lewis of University College Cork, has already called on UK marine renewables companies and research groups to apply for funding to access European facilities through MaRINET:

‘‘MaRINET offers a unique opportunity to access these world-class European test facilities in order to validate and progress concepts at any stage of development, and to ultimately harness the untapped renewable energy resources that are abundant around the European coastline. This is a great opportunity to advance marine renewable research testing and commercial development for both UK and European companies and research groups,’’ he says.

The closing date for applications is 29 February 2012.

Countries & organisations participating in MaRINET: