Country Reports
AUSTRALIA
Mark Hemer and Tracey Pitman (CSIRO)
Stephanie Thornton (Australian Ocean Energy Group)
Australian ocean energy events in 2018 included:
- Australia recently held its 2nd Australian Ocean Renewable Energy Symposium (AORES; Perth, Nov 21-23, 2018) following on from the very successful inaugural symposium held in Melbourne in 2016. AORES fosters collaboration and future growth of the Australian ocean renewable energy sector (wave, tide and offshore wind) by bringing together industry, academics, policy makers and other stakeholders to share information on the latest domestic developments and scientific advancements. At both AORES events a number of international and industry leaders delivered keynote presentations providing valuable a global context.
- As part of AORES 2018, an ocean energy Industry Roundtable was held including: a Developers Showcase with presentations from Australian OE companies, on their respective technologies and their emerging markets; plus two separate panel discussions on market opportunities for ocean energy technologies, one focused on domestic opportunities and the second one on export opportunities.
- Tidal Energy Workshop (Nov 2018 Perth) – a full day workshop was held to share the results to date of the AUSTEn project, a three-year project to map Australia’s tidal energy resources in unprecedented detail, as well as assess Australia’s tidal energy’s economic feasibility and ability to contribute to Australia’s energy needs.
- All Energy symposium held October 2018 – a well-attended and engaging marine energy panel discussion was held.
Two international events will be held in Australia in 2020:
- Asian Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (AWTEC) 2020, will be hosted by University of Tasmania (AMC) and CSIRO.
- 31st International Conference on Coastal Engineering (ICCE) 2020 – will be co-hosted by UNSW, Water Research Laboratory (WRL) in September with a marine renewable session likely.
Other relevant activities:
Members of the Australian ocean energy community expressed strong interest in joining the International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee 114 (IEC TC114). In 2018, national coordination was initiated by AMET and discussions are under way with Standards Australia to establish Australia’s membership in the international committee.
