A vibrant round table conversation on changes needed in European policy were led by Peter Scheijgrond of EWA, Symphony Wave Power’s Fred Gardner was one of the experts on the panel. Kasia Radecka-Moroz of the European Court of Auditors participated to gather information for the European Commission. Which policy changes are needed to better facilitate marine energy to get into the energy mix of sustainable energy in the (near) future? 

Wave power and other forms of marine energy have the potential to generate just as much energy as wind energy. But it requires a slightly different approach. This technology has to be developed from scratch, in the ocean, while wind energy was first developed on land. Therefore, costs are initially higher, but will be able to compete with wind energy in series production. Support from governments is needed for this start-up phase. 

But why do we need marine energy in our future energy mix? Don’t we already have wind? Marine energy has many advantages over wind. For example, Symphony wave power is invisible, because it is under water. It extracts more energy from the same sea surface compared to wind, while costs are the same and expected to be lower in the long run. In the future we therefore expect the question to be asked the other way around. Why do we need wind energy if it can also be done with marine energy?