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Ocean Energy Europe is looking for a Membership, Marketing & Sales Manager to join its Events & Communications team. Please note that this is a temporary position to cover maternity leave for 9 months.

The Position

The Membership, Marketing & Sales Manager is responsible for ensuring that Ocean Energy Europe members receive a high standard of service, recruiting new members into the organisation, and marketing Ocean Energy Europe and its events, including its Annual Conference & Exhibition.

She/he will work closely with the Communications & Events Director and the CEO to deliver membership satisfaction and sales revenue against agreed targets.

The Membership & Marketing Manager is an outward-facing role within the organisation, dealing with industry stakeholders on a regular basis. This requires a genuine interest in supporting ocean energy organisations to develop and grow. It also requires a strong strategic vision.

Jochen Weilepp of the University of Applied Sciences Biberach, is the winner of this year’s Vi Maris Award.

The announcement of this prestigious industry award took place during the OEE2021 Conference & Exhibition in Brussels. Vi Maris, meaning ‘the power of the sea’, is an industry award established by Ocean Energy Europe, which recognises the outstanding contribution of an individual to the ocean energy sector.

Jochen Weilepp was nominated for his work as a long-time supporter and champion of ocean energy. He is a professor for Energy Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Biberach, Germany, and holds a PhD in Physics and an MBA (INSEAD).

On the occasion of the OEE2021 event, the EuropeWave project has announced the successful tenderers in its innovative Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process.
 

Following a strong response to the initial call for tenders, seven successful project teams have been selected by a panel of independent experts and will share a budget of €2.4 million to further develop their wave energy device concepts in the first half of 2022.

The EuropeWave project, a five-year collaborative R&D funding programme, is a partnership between Wave Energy Scotland (WES) and the Basque Energy Agency (EVE). Match-funded by the European Commission via its Horizon2020 programme, this transnational collaboration will channel almost €20 million to procure the most promising wave energy technology solutions from developers across Europe and beyond.

Brussels, 6 December 2021

The Basque Energy Cluster and Ocean Energy Europe (OEE) are teaming up to deliver a joint event on ocean energy in 2022. The unique event, ICOE-OEE 2022, will gather ocean energy professionals and decision-makers from all corners of the globe in San Sebastián – Donostia, in the Basque Country, Spain.

By joining forces, the organisers will offer an unparalleled opportunity for the sector to showcase its successes, network and do business. Taking place on 18-20 October, the event combines Ocean Energy Europe’s annual conference and exhibition, and the International Ocean Conference on Ocean Energy, which is supported by the International Energy Agency’s Technological Collaboration Program on Ocean Energy Systems (IEA/OES).

The Basque Country is one of the world’s leading centres of ocean energy. Building on an impressive industrial history, it is now home to a wealth of innovative wave energy activity, including the BiMEP test centre, the Mutriku power plant and over 50 companies, universities and technology centres working in key regional and European initiatives.

Ocean Energy Europe is the largest network of ocean energy professionals in the world. Its annual event brings together hundreds of people from across the sector, including politicians, senior decision-makers and key industrial players.

Ocean Energy Europe applauds the UK government’s decision to ringfence £20m (€23.7m) per year for tidal stream energy in its ‘Contracts for Difference’ revenue support programme for renewables. This single decision will promote the deployment of at least 34MW of tidal energy in the coming years.

Rémi Gruet, CEO of Ocean Energy Europe, commented: “It is fantastic to see the UK seize the opportunity of a new home-grown renewable energy industry. The UK Government has rightly identified the many benefits of ocean energy, e.g. clockwork predictability, grid balancing for variable wind and solar, and local economic development. This move confirms what industry has long been saying – ‘per MWh’ revenue support schemes can rapidly scale up innovative renewables to industrial scale.

It is now time for the European Union to implement its 2020 Strategy on Offshore Renewable Energy and join the drive to create a global ocean energy market. The review of the Renewable Energy Directive is the perfect opportunity to deliver on the Strategy. A specific target for innovative renewables would ensure that not only cheap wind and solar get built, but also complementary and early-stage technologies such as tidal and wave energy.”

Reacting to the conclusions of the extraordinary Energy Council, the heads of 7 renewable energy associations call upon Europe to prioritise the diversification of renewable energy supply as a matter of urgency. A wider range of renewables will deliver a cleaner energy system that protects citizens and businesses from future energy shocks.

The recent spikes in fossil gas prices show how much European economic and social life depends upon a stable energy supply. Accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources is absolutely the solution – but increasing just the quantity alone is not enough.

Diversity of supply has always been a core principle of energy system security. And Europe is blessed with a wealth of different renewable energy sources.

Together with wind and solar PV, Europe can call upon geothermal, solar heat, wave, hydro, concentrated solar power and tidal energy. Collectively these renewable sources can provide decarbonised and balanced energy at any point in the day, season or year.

The European Commission is writing new State Aid rules for energy. These rules are really important for the sector – they decide if and how national and regional governments can fund renewable energy projects.

The new draft rules are a big improvement on the old rules. They are much simpler, so renewable projects are easier to fund than other sectors.

Most importantly the % ‘thresholds’ on public funding are removed. Now governments can provide as much public funding as is needed to close a project’s ‘funding gap’. It will be much simpler to properly fund demo projects, and to combine different sources of public funds. So this is a big win. In addition, national governments can still allocate revenue support to individual technologies – so ocean energy does not need to compete directly against more established mature tech.

Transforming the energy sector requires a shift towards renewable energy sources. The world’s oceans are a source of abundant renewable energy, which can be tapped through offshore wind (with fixed and floating foundations, or airborne), floating solar photovoltaics (PV) and other emerging ocean energy technologies.

The G20 Italian presidency of 2021, acknowledging the importance of offshore renewables in the energy transition, commissioned IRENA to analyse and develop a proposed action agenda to foster offshore renewables deployment globally. Offshore renewables include offshore wind, ocean wave, tidal, thermal and salinity gradient technologies and floating solar PV.

Download the report

The European Commission has launched a call for expression of interest to become a member of a new working group on offshore renewable energy, under the framework of the clean energy industrial forum. The deadline for applications is 10 September 2021 and the call is open to all relevant stakeholder organisations.

Following on from last year’s Commission Strategy for Offshore Renewable Energy, the mandate of the group will be to help contribute to reaching the EU’s offshore renewable energy ambitions of an installed capacity of at least 60 GW offshore wind and at least 1 GW of ocean energy by 2030, with a view to achieving capacity of at least 300 GW and 40 GW respectively by 2050.

In concrete terms, the working group will identify and define the challenges which the sector faces and potential implementation bottlenecks for reaching the 2030 and 2050 goals – and develop recommendations for overcoming these. Amongst others, this is likely to focus on the critical value chain, the different supply chain segments, and associated investments – all of which need to be scaled up in order to ensure that EU renewables deployment targets can be met in a sustainable way (e.g. circularity).

The members of the working group will be decided in the first half of September with the first meeting likely in mid-October. 

Further information and application criteria

As the science and knowledge service of the European Commission, the mission of the Joint Research Centre is to support EU policies with independent evidence throughout the whole policy cycle.

The current vacancy is in the ‘Knowledge for the Energy Union’ Unit of Directorate C – Energy, Transport & Climate. Its mission is to support the delivery of the European Green Deal and the transition to a climate-neutral economy with scientific evidence, through the mapping and analysis of relevant knowledge and data, the generation of new evidence, the anticipation of evolving trends and effective communication.

As Project Officer for innovation in clean energy technologies with focus on ocean energy you will be carrying out research to support the Commission Research & Innovation and Energy policy making process with scientific analysis and data.

APPLY HERE