Marine energy already employs more than 1,000 people in Scotland – but the numbers involved could eventually exceed the 145,000 involved in North Sea oil and gas, if the industry achieves its potential.

This prediction was made on Wednesday by Martin McAdam, chief executive of Edinburgh-based Aquamarine Power, the only UK company that is developing wave and tidal power simultaneously.

He was speaking at the launch of a report by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers that called on the Scottish government to invest £40m ($61m) in the industry as it moves to testing the technology for wave and tidal power in the real ocean environment.

The report warns that failure to invest now in new plants being piloted by some of Scotland’s leading renewable engineering companies at the government-funded European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney would be a huge missed opportunity to develop one of the world’s most promising renewable technologies.

Professor Bill Banks, president of the institute, said: “Scotland is uniquely placed to take advantage of the opportunity presented by marine energy. To take full advantage of this the Scottish government – and indeed the UK too – must play a leadership role in growing the enterprise.”

The report says: “Over the years there has been some doubt that the industry could deliver on its potential and many within the industry would agree that they were guilty of over-optimism on timescale. However, the marine energy sector has recently demonstrated that it can deliver power onto the electricity grid.”

Mr McAdam said the main reason for the delays was the ferocity of the ocean environment, where extreme storms could generate forces a thousand times stronger than normal waves.

Both Holyrood and Westminster have recently agreed to target an 80 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, compared with 1990 levels. Westminster is proposing that about a third of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewable energy by 2020. Holyrood has more ambitious targets of 30 per cent by 2011 and 50 per cent by 2020.

The report said Scotland was particularly well placed to respond to this challenge, having world-leading natural resources and a long tradition of engineering innovation. Scotland also had the potential to produce 25 per cent of Europe’s wind power, 25 per cent of Europe’s tidal power and and 10 per cent of Europe’s wave power.

“Another legacy of the North Sea oil and gas industry is the manufacturing and port facilities necessary to construct and transport large marine structures,” said the report (source: ft.com).

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