The event gathered around 40 people covering the value chain in Sweden.
The Swedish Energy Agency represented by Lars Karlbom & Marit Marsh Strömberg held two presentations on their ocean energy strategy and the ocean energy program. Lars gave an overall understanding of the purpose of the ocean energy program and showed some interesting statistics from the global ocean energy sector. Marit explained the focus of the energy program and tried to straighten out any questions regarding the funding system, which was of huge interest during the Q&A which followed. Karlbom’s rhetorical question was perhaps the best summary of the event as a whole:
“How can we come up with more valuable solutions and promote our developers and also make them cooperate even more?”
The second session of the day focused on the Swedish research relating to the ocean energy sector. Short presentations were given by Johannes Palm (Chalmers), Emiliano Pinori (RISE), Anders Hagneståhl (KTH), Irina Temiz (Uppsala University) and Sam Fredriksson (University of Gothenburg).
After lunch the participants returned for the third session which focused on collaboration to achieve global success, also involving a general discussion of what is needed from the industry’s point of view. The industry was in this case represented by Anders Olsson (PMCCylinders), Joakim Nyström (SSAB Special Steels), Mathias Johanson (Alkit Communication), Patrik Möller (CorPower Ocean) and Magnus Rahm (Waves4Power). Notable from this session was the discussion of risk elimination relating to the importance of trust and collaboration between developers and suppliers.
“It is important to mention that this sector can take off once we can guarantee ocean energy as a safe financial investment. As long as we have risks concerning durability or survivability we won’t reach our goals of financial investment. The certification of warranties is one of the most important to move the sector forward.” – Patrik Möller, CorPower Ocean
Mattias Johansson, Alkit Communications, discussed the importance in learning from your customer to fully understand what is needed.
“Our main customers today are in the automotive industry, but we are looking at other markets and are looking for growth potential where ocean energy and other offshore and marine markets are interesting. We are looking at how we can apply automotive technology on this sector and we believe to do that, it is not as simple as just do what we have done before – in a different market. We have to learn about specifics for the ocean energy sector and it is important to learn from each other.”
The final session focused on test and demonstration opportunities in Sweden. Irina Temiz (Uppsala University), Johannes Hüffmeier (RISE), Magnus Wibling (Seabased), Michael Leer-Andersen (SSPA) and Anne Gunnäs (Lysekil Municipality) all gave the audience a short introduction of various test sites around Sweden, including Testsite Skagerrak, SSPA’s towing tank facility in Gothenburg and the wave power test site in Sotenäs. Before starting the matchmaking/mingle, the seminar was concluded by the host Pierre Ingmarsson (Ocean Energy Sweden). Earlier in the day he said what was perhaps the most important take away for an ocean energy sector looking to decrease its costs to be competitive on a global energy market:
“We have seen reports with estimated numbers for different areas, but the reality is that cost was reduced much faster once the supply chain became part of the discussion. Once you get into the ocean and get the supply chain involved, then you can really reduce the costs.”