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ISLAND BIDS FOR WIND AND WAVE POWER

By Ross Findon - Thursday, March 27, 2008
ISLAND BIDS FOR WIND AND WAVE POWER
Dame Ellen MacArthur at the Eco-Island conference at Cowes Yacht Haven yesterday (Wednesday). Picture by LAURA HOLME.
MILLIONS of pounds of funding and investment for wind and tidal energy could be on the horizon for the Island, it was revealed at the first ever Eco-Island conference yesterday (Wednesday).
More than 340 people attended the conference to hear speakers including Dame Ellen MacArthur, Eden project scientific director Sir Ghilean Prance and Sir Terry Farrell’s urban design director, Eugene Dreyer.
Bids worth up to £80 million in total have already gone in to national funding body the Energy Technologies Institute for the development of wind and tidal energy programmes on the Island.
They have been put forward by the council, working with Southampton University and two as yet unnamed businesses, and an initial decision about the bids is expected by early May, according to council chief executive Joe Duckworth.
Mr Duckworth told the County Press ahead of the conference they were already working with energy company e.on on ways of reducing energy use on the Island.
He said the council was in further talks with government research agency the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council about funding research into sustainable energy on the Island.
Prof Bill Wakeham, Southampton University vice chancellor, said the Island could become an exporter of sustainable energy in the future, with figures suggesting it would at times be able to produce more than double the energy it used through on and off-shore wind power and tidal power.
He said companies such as e.on and Island-based composites manufacturers Vestas could provide the business lead for funding bids to the ETI, but said they were around three years away from putting pilot projects in place.
However, behavioural and cultural changes, not only new technology, were needed, according to Prof Wakeham.
His views were echoed by Dame Ellen, who said: “We need to get back to a stage where we value what we have.
“On a boat you learn the value of the resources you have and make the most of them. That is the sort of thinking we need to be applying to everyday life.”