Portugal in Twinning Exercise for an Offshore Wind Energy Partnership

WavEC Offshore Renewables announces that the TWIND project, in the field of offshore wind energy, was approved for funding under the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Program.

The project is coordinated by WavEC and it gathers three other internationally recognized research entities: Tecnalia Research & Innovation (Spain), Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (United Kingdom) and Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands).

The TWIND project was launched in July 2019 and it will have a duration of three years, with a total budget of 796 thousand Euros. Its overall objective is to create a network of excellence that will dynamize a pool of specialized research professionals and trainees in the domain of offshore wind energy to support an emerging industry in Portugal in a field with a very strong anticipated growth and no dedicated existing training curriculum.

The project aims to raise the research profile of WavEC, as an institution from a so-called Widening Country (Portugal), as well as the research profile of its staff, in the specific field of offshore wind energy, enhancing at the same time the scientific and technological capacity of all the institutions involved. It does so by coordinating efforts and enhancing excellence and innovation capacity through the exchange of knowledge with the above mentioned internationally-leading counterparts at the EU level (Spain, UK and The Netherlands). The combined capabilities of the partners will set the grounds to exploit existing research results and invest in developing further knowledge.

The networking and knowledge exchange initiatives will stimulate research activities and the development of highly qualified services that will significantly impact the economy and the society, thus benefitting not only WavEC and the partner organizations, but Portugal at large. These initiatives will further dynamize field activities in the Portuguese offshore test sites with impact at regional level.

TWIND is aligned with several National and European priorities, namely the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, the Portuguese Industrial Strategy for Ocean Renewable Energies, published in 2017, and the SET Plan Offshore Wind Implementation Plan, adopted in June 2018, establishing a consolidation path for WavEC's strategy in this area and stimulating the development of a supply chain in Portugal for floating offshore wind.