EU-Wide Advantages and Opportunities for De-risking Wave Energy Technology Development Through Transnational PCP

1. Single Market Access

• Immediate entry point to the EU’s 450+ million consumers and the integrated electricity market (ENTSO-E), facilitating cross-border Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) once TRL 8 devices are certified.

• Large, diversified wave-energy resource along Atlantic, North Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean coasts allows developers to tailor business models (island supply, coastal grid support, hydrogen production) without leaving the Single Market.

• Common CE marking and EU conformity assessment procedures reduce the cost and time to commercialise the same device design across 27 Member States instead of undergoing multiple national approvals.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Minimum-3-country consortium plus two public procurers guarantees a pan-European buyers’ group able to aggregate demand and negotiate better terms with technology suppliers.

• Access to Europe’s flagship test sites – e.g. BiMEP (ES), SEM-REV (FR), SmartBay (IE), PMEC (PT), Lamma (IT), DanWEC (DK) – accelerates demonstration while allowing comparative performance benchmarking under identical IEA-OES metrics.

• Joint use of EU data spaces (EMODnet, Copernicus marine data, EU Digital Twins of the Ocean) streamlines environmental monitoring and speeds up permitting.

3. Alignment with EU Policy Priorities

• Directly serves the European Green Deal, REPowerEU and the Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy target of 40 GW ocean energy by 2050.

• Contributes to Fit-for-55 emissions-reduction goals and provides dispatchable renewable generation that supports the ongoing market design reform for flexibility services.

• Integrates Digital Europe objectives through mandatory data sharing, open APIs and potential AI-enabled resource forecasting.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Standardisation

• PCP creates a single tender with a common technical specification, de-fragmenting national approaches and feeding into CEN/CENELEC and IEC TC-114 standards for wave energy.

• Harmonised environmental impact assessment (EIA) protocols generated by the consortium can be adopted EU-wide, lowering permitting barriers for future commercial arrays.

5. Leveraging the EU Innovation Ecosystem

• Immediate access to Europe’s leading marine R&D actors (Fraunhofer, SINTEF, Tecnalia, NREL-EU labs, universities) and to ERA-NET BlueBio, Clean Energy Transition Partnership and EIT InnoEnergy networks.

• Possible integration with Digital Innovation Hubs for marine robotics, materials and AI, providing high-end test, simulation and certification facilities at reduced or no cost.

6. Funding Synergies & Blended Finance

• 50 % co-funding from Horizon Europe can be matched with national blue-economy programmes, Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds, BlueInvest equity, Innovation Fund grants (for first-of-a-kind plants) and EIB/InvestEU loans.

• Early engagement with CEF-Energy and ESIF coastal regions facilitates grid-connection financing and port infrastructure upgrades, maximising post-PCP bankability.

7. Scale, Replicability & Impact

• Requirement for at least two commercial-scale demonstrators (12-month tests) ensures technology reaches TRL 7/8 and is ready to progress to Stage 5 (array demonstration) with minimal additional risk.

• Data, lessons learned and tender documents will be published in all EU languages, enabling rapid uptake by other coastal regions and creating a self-reinforcing market pull.

• Creates high-quality green jobs in shipbuilding, composite structures, subsea cabling and O&M services across multiple EU maritime clusters.

8. Strategic Recommendations for Applicants

1. Form a buyers’ club early – engage energy utilities and coastal public authorities from high-resource regions (PT, ES, IE, FR, EL) to demonstrate genuine aggregated demand.

2. Bundle value-chain partners – include a certification body, insurance broker and circular-economy advisor to address lifetime cost, end-of-life and bankability tasks highlighted in the call.

3. Plan for Stage 5 funding now – map follow-on sources (Innovation Fund, InvestEU) and reference them in the business plan to show a clear route to market roll-out.

4. Exploit EU taxonomy alignment – demonstrate that the device will meet Do-No-Significant-Harm and Taxonomy climate-mitigation criteria, easing future private investment inflows.

5. Maximise open science – commit to FAIR data principles and integration with EMODnet/OceanDataPortal to score higher on Horizon evaluation for impact and excellence.

Bottom Line: By working at EU scale, consortia benefit from aggregated demand, harmonised standards, the full breadth of European R&D and finance instruments, and a coastline unrivalled for wave-energy resource diversity—creating a clear, low-risk pathway from prototype to EU-wide commercial roll-out.