Vi Maris Award 2023

The OEE industry award Vi Maris (Force of the sea) recognises excellence in the ocean energy industry. The award acknowledges individuals or organisations who have made an outstanding contribution to the ocean energy sector.

The winner is selected by a subcommittee of the Ocean Energy Europe board, who have extensive experience of the sector and who are not affiliated to a particular company. This year’s award was presented during the Ocean Energy Europe 2023 Conference & Exhibition.  

The 2023 award winner is Tony Lewis, CFO of OceanEnergy.

Tony Lewis has been working in and for the ocean energy sector for over 40 years. The ‘father of ocean energy’, Tony is currently the Chief Technology Officer at OceanEnergy, a member of the Board of Ocean Energy Europe, a Principal Investigator in MaREI and Professor Emeritus in University College Cork, Ireland and a globally recognised expert on ocean energy systems. 

Tony and OceanEnergy will deploy a 1MW wave energy converter at the US navy wave energy test site in Hawaii in 2023, and are currently coordinating the WEDUSEA project, which brings together 14 industry partners from across Europe to work together to commercialise wave energy by demonstrating a second grid connected 1MW WEC, named OE35, in Orkney, Scotland. 

The Vi Maris Award was launched in 2019, the previous winner are:

• Sue Barr, Marine Energy Council – 2019 Vi Maris Award
• Jason Hayman, Sustainable Marine – 2020 Vi Maris Award
• Jochen Weilepp, University of Applied Sciences Biberach – 2021 Vi Maris Award
• Britta Schaffmeister, DMEC – 2022 Vi Maris Award