Deputy First Minister and Minister for Enterprise and Life Long Learning Nicol Stephen opened the show by pledging an additional £20 million investment in renewable energy in the UK for the next two years; this is additional to the £100 million that has been invested in Scotland over the preceding three years.

He commented: “We all know that climate change is a clear and present danger. We can see the ice caps melting live before our eyes through web cams. We can watch mainstream TV programmes bringing the issue into every home. We now need to make the progress we should have done at $10 a barrel before oil gets to $100. That is the global challenge.”

In support of these developments DNV profiled the work that has been done in support of wind, wave and tidal energy, and there was particular interest in the forthcoming Offshore Service Specification OSS-312, verification, certification and classification of tidal and wave energy converters.

Great interest for WindStore
Great interest was generated by the WindStore concept, a DNV Joint Industry Project (JIP) looking at large-scale compressed air energy storage in depleted reservoirs, aquifers, salt domes and underground mines. The partners are Production Geoscience Ltd (PGL) and Scottish Enterprise. There was interest at the show from potential additional participants. Lindsey Burnett, a spokesperson from Scottish Enterprise commented: “Renewable energy will play an increasingly important role in Scotland’s future and innovative joint industry projects such as this will help fulfil that role and bring value to our economy.”