Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and Tus Holdings have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the People’s Government of Qingdao and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology in China.
The MoU comes as part of ORE Catapult and Tus Holdings’ partnership, under which they established the TUS-ORE Catapult Research Centre (TORC) for offshore wind in China.
The new agreement will see the four parties cooperating in the Qingdao Marine Science and Technology Revitalization Plan and jointly developing marine renewable energy technology and cooperation between China and the UK.
Additionally, UK company Anakata signed an MoU with TUS Wind, Qingdao Government and TUS Triple Helix to progress rotor blade technology in the Chinese market.
“This new collaboration is an important and very welcome next step in growing our presence in China. We expect it to facilitate further joint research programmes and support market entry and incubation for UK businesses in China through demonstration of new technologies on a 300MW wind farm in the Shandong Province,” said ORE Catapult CEO, Andrew Jamieson .
According to ORE Catapult, Qingdao is an important coastal economic center in Shandong Province and is located close to the TORC center.
TORC, launched this March, acts as a renewable energy technology R&D center with links into both the UK and China to support the growth of their respective offshore wind industries.
The center is said to develop collaborative research programs, support market entry and incubation for UK businesses in China, provide commercial support for local developers and support the demonstration of new technologies on the 300MW offshore wind farm in the Shandong Province.