Noel Coonan (Tipperary North, Fine Gael)
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Question 88: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the timeframe under which he expects to see commercial energy generation coming from wave energy projects onto the national grid; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43677/08]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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Earlier this year I launched the Ocean Energy Initiative to ensure Ireland is well positioned in the development of ocean energy technologies. Ireland's ocean energy resource offers significant potential to become a key contributor to the development of our renewable energy capacity.

The programme includes:

The establishment of the Ocean Energy Development Unit based in Sustainable Energy Ireland to oversee the programme and ensure coordinated delivery of all programme elements;

The creation of a state-of-the-art National Ocean Energy facility in University College Cork to support scale model development;

The development of a grid-connected wave energy test site off the west coast to support the next generation of research models;

A €2 million Ocean Energy Prototype Fund and

The introduction of a new feed-in-tariff under the REFIT scheme for wave energy of €220 per Megawatt Hour.

The ocean energy sector, which includes a variety of technological applications, is moving progressively from early stage tank and model testing to scale testing in sea environments with several prototypes already being tested in our existing Galway Bay test site.

A small number of wave and tidal energy-capture technologies are being tested in open-ocean environments internationally.

This is frontier technology, which must be able to operate over long periods with a high degree of reliability in an extremely hostile and changeable environment.

It is, of course, difficult to predict with precision when the ongoing research and demonstration programmes in Ireland and internationally will deliver fully commercial options into the market. Industry estimates are that it may be 3-5 years before fully commercial-scale wave-farm systems are available for deployment anywhere in the world.