By K.Steiner-Dicks on Dec 3, 2013

A panel discussion was started by Frederik W. Mowinckel, director at energy and environment merchant bank Turquoise International, at Tidal Today’s recent International Summit highlighted that the vast majority of investment in marine energy in the UK comes from foreign companies rather than UK-based industrial and engineering groups.

“There is clear evidence to show that the UK presents a vast wave and tidal resource that has the potential to supply significant amounts of the country’s energy demands,” said Mowinckel. “However, to date, there has been too little investment into marine energy by UK-based companies and, although companies might produce energy, a marine energy industry is not being created.”

“The summit has provided a forum for key industry bodies and members to discuss how to make the UK and global marine energy markets more attractive to investors, but there is still plenty to be done.”

He addressed the International Tidal Energy Summit as part of a finance and investment panel. The focus of the panel was on the issues of securing finance for commercial scale projects, outlining the key considerations for renewable energy.

Frederik has been a part of the marine cleantech industry since 2006, and spoke from his experience as a director of Turquoise, founding shareholder and board member of Aquamarine Power and as a director of Oceanflow Energy. As well as advising businesses in the sector, Frederik has also invested his own money in a number of projects and is well-equipped to understand the energy finance.

Turquoise invests directly through Turquoise Capital (seed stage proprietary investments) and manages the Low Carbon Innovation Fund.