Opportunities
Initially MTEC is focused on tidal development in Canada and the United Kingdom. Scotland, in the UK and Nova Scotia, in Canada are emerging as leaders of the 8-10 countries in the world that are actively exploring the development of tidal energy.
This assessment is based on their R & D, development, demonstration, regulation and investment
activity to date.
UK
The UK plans to install 1GW of tidal power capacity by 2020 – enough to supply the energy needs of
over 1 million homes. In 2010, Scotland began leasing undersea real estate to a half dozen consortiums in exchange for the development of 600 MW in by 2010.
It is estimate that tidal stream energy could become competitive with current base costs of electricity by the time the UK has installed its estimated capacity of 2.8 GW.
Canada
Ocean Renewable Energy Group (OREG), a national industry organization, has said Canada could
reasonably target 15 GW of tidal, wave, and in-stream river energy by 2050.
The economic tidal energy capacity for the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia, has been estimated to be
between 350 MW and 8 GW, with a central estimate in the 1 – 2 GW range. (approximately 5 – 8% of
the known worldwide tidal stream resource)
OREG believes that Nova Scotia could reasonably expect to build a capacity of 100 MW by 2020.
Nova Scotia has authorized feed-in tariffs for developmental tidal arrays that reflect the cost of the
turbines and their deployment, and is currently developing strategies and infrastructure for commercializing marine renewable energy.