The NeSSIE project (North Sea Solutions for Innovation in Corrosion for Energy) has launched a competition seeking to develop commercial solutions for corrosion and material challenges in offshore renewables through demonstration projects in the North Sea.
The competition is expected to help the European offshore renewables industry to handle corrosion issues, lower the cost of low carbon electricity and create up to EUR 84,000 million of supply chain opportunities by 2050.
NeSSIE partners said the competition aims at connecting project developers in the offshore renewables sector with innovative supply chain companies across Europe and backed by the European Commission.
The first stage will see three leading companies looking to deploy corrosion-related demonstration projects in the North Sea, after which the successful companies will be supported to develop calls in the second stage which will welcome innovative solutions to these challenges from the supply chain.
The winning projects will be supported by the NeSSIE partners to put together business cases and to identify potential funding packages for project delivery.
“NeSSIE is an EU-funded project that aims to identify three large-scale investable demonstration projects and investment sources in the field of corrosion and new materials in the North Sea Basin,” Jan Reid , energy and clean technologies team leader within Scottish Enterprise and SRO for NeSSIE, said.
“The project is focused on identifying the companies in the field who can drive market leading solutions that will attract finance and result in the demonstration projects being deployed.”
According to the project partners, a lot of initial scoping work has been completed on the project to identify the market potential and the areas around corrosion that are expected to allow the most significant cost reductions. So far, the identified areas include cathodic protection, the design of structures, quality control, preparation and applying of coatings.
Last year, the European Commission selected the NeSSIE project for funding under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). It is being jointly carried out by participants from the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Sweden.