The South West Marine Energy Park has released a paper outlining the longer term opportunities and ambition for the development of marine energy in South West England.
According to the report , the longer term opportunity for the South West will be through the development of new foundation and installation technologies – including floating wind – which will open up the opportunity for the next generation of wind farms in deeper water in the outer Bristol Channel, Celtic Sea and off the south coast.
It also predicts that deployment of demonstration arrays at Wave Hub will lead to the first commercial wave farms by 2025, and 300-500 MW by 2030 leading to 1–2GW in the following decade.
Looking out to 2030, the report says tidal stream arrays will accumulate to 100-200 MW while the tidal range lagoons off Somerset will reach the capacity of up to 4 GW.