Ocean Power Innovation Network

The Ocean Power Innovation Network (OPIN) is a 4 year initiative, running from 2019 to 2022. The project has a total project budget of €2.6M, with €1.5M in financial support contributed by Interreg North West Europe from the European Research and Development Fund (ERDF). OPIN is a cross-sectoral collaborative network that aims to accelerate the growth of the ocean energy sector and its supply chains across the partner regions of Ireland, the UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany. Currently, the lack of cross-sectoral collaboration is limiting the opportunities to bring existing and already proven expertise, capabilities and products from other sectors into the ocean energy sector. This makes the technology’s development unnecessarily expensive and slow. The ocean energy sector can benefit from technology developments in other sectors by exploiting positive synergies with technology, supply chain and infrastructure development. OPIN will address this issue by creating a forum for collaboration and technology exchange across the partner regions. Companies from regions with ocean energy expertise will interact with potential collaborators from regions that are world leaders in other technology fields (offshore wind energy, oil and gas, aerospace, automotive and manufacturing). OPIN will provide a mechanism to transfer expertise between these regions, addressing the disparities in innovation and economic development across North West Europe.