Funds will help develop Marine energy centre in SE Asia

Funds will help develop Marine energy centre in SE Asia

Researchers at Robert Gordon University have won £166k in funding from the
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Prosperity Fund to support the
establishment of a South East Asia Marine Energy Centre (SEAMEC) in
Indonesia.

Dr Alan Owen and Dr Leuserina Garniati from the university's Centre for
Understanding Sustainability in Practice (CUSP) worked with UK and
Indonesian academic, business, and NGO partners to secure the funding.

SEAMEC, which has the support of both industry and academia, looks to create
a multinational, multi-stakeholder platform to drive policy and capacity
building within the region as part of a long-term, comprehensive marine
renewable energy programme within South East Asia.

Dr Owen commented: "I would point towards the European Marine Energy Centre
(EMEC) in Orkney as an example of the kind of model we are trying to create
in South East Asia, but with the emphasis on capacity building,
socio-economic outputs and developing policy and strategy rather than
technical outputs."

Dr Garniati added: "We also hope that SEAMEC will play a significant role in
opening up knowledge exchange between renewable energy expertise in the
northern and southern hemispheres to identify new materials, methods and
fabrication processes appropriate for a very different marine environment.
Given the many and varied challenges posed by extending marine energy
technologies into the region and the huge untapped marine energy potential
therein, SEAMEC is a necessary platform to ensure equal opportunity in
collaborating with business, academia and governments in one of the most
economically exciting regions of the world."

Since its inception in 2009, the CUSP team has won over £1.58 million in
multi-donor funding to undertake sustainable energy applied research and
capacity building in Europe and South East Asia. From these, it has produced
strategic briefs and policy recommendations, and has utilised many of the
findings to enrich the materials in its postgraduate teaching.

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Ref:
http://www.waterpowermagazine.com/news/newsfunds-will-help-develop-marine-en
ergy-centre-in-se-asia-4995630

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com