The Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference is a little more than two months away. So in the time leading up to the conferece, OREC will be launching a special “Profiles in Ocean Energy” series, highlightling the pioneer developers, regulators, engineers, lawyers and environmentalists at the forefront of the industry. If you are interested in being the subject of a profile, or nominating someone as a subject, please send an email to info@oceanrenewable.com.
The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition is co-sponsoring the Global Marine Energy Conference.
Save the date – April 17-18, 2008 and visit the above link to register.
As part of our continuing outreach program, OREC has set up a Facebook Group that we invite you to join. This is an ideal way to network with others who have an interest in marine renewables and to raise public awareness about the promise of marine renewable energy.
On October 2, 2007, FERC held a public hearing and technical conference on a proposed expedited process for pilot projects. Carolyn Elefant, legislative and regulatory counsel for OREC, delivered an abbreviated version of these comments which will be filed with the Commission. In addition, you can view the full transcript of the FERC conference at this link.
We’ve quickly reviewed the dozen or so comments filed. Many commenters have asked FERC to undertake a formal rulemaking and issue regulations to govern the pilot process. Indeed, some commenters have even suggested that FERC must issue a formal rulemaking to comply with the requirements of laws such as the Administrative Procedure Act. Other commenters do not believe that a rulemaking is required, but have asked FERC to clarify certain matters, such as whether a pilot license would have priority over a permit or whether developers could seek sequential pilot license.
Here at OREC, we support FERC’s initiative. We hope that the other agencies involved in the licensing process will come on board with the effort so that we begin to test these new technologies which offer so much promise.
OREC’s newly designed website and blog have been up and running since the spring, to rave reviews. Here are some things you should know about our site:
–We installed an open source Google based calendar on the front page which lists activities and conferences of interest to the marine renewables community on the front page. If you’d like to add an event, please let us know.
–We have stocked with website with a number of Reports and Papers that you won’t find elsewhere, and we continue to grow the list of resources. If you’re interested in other reports, you can also check out there reports (embedded in posts) from the FAQ section so that you can answer basic questions on wave and tidal energy.
–Our site is hosted by DreamHost, a carbon neutral company.
–We’ve been tracking website stats; we average about 50 visits per day. More interestingly, average time spent at our site is 2 minutes and 22 seconds, at least four times longer than the 50 seconds that is typical for most sites. That means that people coming to our site and finding value and staying around for it.
If you’re interested in an update on some of our members’ activities (specifically, Ocean Power Technologies and the Pelamis Wave Compay, f/k/a Ocean Power Delivery, visit this post from my Renewables Offshore Blog. Also in the news is one of our law firm members, Stoel Rives, which announced the release of The Law of Ocean Energy, that you can access online here.
At the home page of the OREC Website, we maintain a calendar of upcoming conferences of interest to the marine renewables, and broader renewables community. We’ve just stocked the calendar with upcoming events for the next twelve months, so take a look and see if anything interests you. And, if you know of an event that might interest OREC members, please submit it to us at carolyn.elefant@gmail.com
On July 19, 2007, the Commission issued this Press Release announcing that it will convene a technical conference to discuss a proposal for a process for new wave, tidal and hydrokinetic technologies that would allow them to complete licensing in as little as six months. The process would be available for projects 5 megawatts or smaller, removable on short notice and for the purpose of testing new technologies. The expedited licenses would issue for a term of five years.So where did FERC get this idea? OREC proposed the “supra-expedited” five year license for experimental and new commercial technologies back in February 2007 in our FERC Comments filed in response to the Notice of Inquiry on Preliminary Permits (see the comments at 10-13). Though many groups endorsed a speedy licensing process (a no brainer, after all), OREC was the sole entity to flesh out how the supra-expedited license process would work and to emphasize the need to allow projects to sell power during the five year experimental phase. And FERC listened. OREC will continue to represent the needs of the industry before FERC moving forward.
This Summer stay tuned for updates on the OREC website.
