OTEO

Project

The effort put in finding ways of exctracting the potential of the ocean energy, with the objective of suppressing the energetic necessities of the earth, has long history. for example, in the sector of wave energy there some records of proposals with date from the begining of 1800 century. 
 
 
However, the discovery of great resources, relatively easy the explore and with high energetic density, coming from the comercial exploitation of coal, gas, oil, and nuclear energy, sources that combined represent 90% of the world energy, and from whom Europe is highly dependent, led to a delay in the application of large scale and in the technological development of therenewable energy conversion. 
 
 
Recently, the progressive rise in the price of the energetic sources referred as  "fossil fuels" and the rise in the discordance about the utilization of the nuclear energy, in parallel with the ecologic awareness growth, gave a new breath to the marine renewable area. In this context, the bet on the renewable energies is increasing again, specially in the specific case of the marine renewables which represent a great unexploited potential. 
 
 
Portugal, when it comes to the marine energy, is positioned as a piooneer in the conception of extraction systems, in legal issues that unblock the testing of technology in territorial areas and as a country with the capacity to answer the solicitations from the sectors related to the naval industry. After success in some of the demonstrations of technological viability, Portugal presents the wind energy in open seas and the wave energy as its maritime energetic resources with the most potentialfor the comercialdevelopment. These two ways of energy extraction will be, from the group of the offshore energies, those that, in a short term, will represent the biggest share of contribution to the national energetic goals of renewable energy. 
 
 
This way, the OTEO project was born, fundamented by the referred potential of the oceans for the renewable energy and by its importance for the energetic goals that were established allied to the valious contribution to the economic, social and territorial cohesion bof the country.  With this intent, the OTEO - 'Technological Observatory for the Offshore Energies' establishes as a strategy the portuguese and the international knowledge of offshore energy  technologies as well as support  technologies in order to increase the competitiveness and the entrepreneurship in this sector. For that end the following activities will be held in the project:
 

Activities of the Project:

  • State-of-art of the marine renewables energy formulation.
  • Market study and identification of business opportunities in offshore renewable energy. 
  • Analysis of offshore renewable energy harnessing systems. 
  • Identification of the necessary competences to the development of offshore energy harnessing projects.
  • Construction of a directory wich will identify the national entities with competences in the areas and activities necessary to the development of the offshore energy sector. 
  • Development of a technological road-map that will identify the actions, schedule and costs, to develop a optimized value chain for the national offshore renewable energy sector. 
  • Promote discussion  to foment the partnerships and the development of projects to harness renewable energy offshore. 
  • Disclosure of the project results.