Researchers at Robert Gordon University have won £165,760 in funding to help set up a South East Asia Marine Energy Centre (SEAMEC) in Indonesia.
Dr Alan Owen and Dr Leuserina Garniati from the university’s Centre for Understanding Sustainability in Practice (CUSP) worked with UK and Indonesian academic, business, and NGO partners to secure the funding from the British Foreign Office.
The SEAMEC project aims to create a multinational, multi-stakeholder platform to drive policy and capacity-building as part of a long-term, comprehensive marine renewable energy programme within South East Asia.
Dr Owen said: “I would point towards the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney as an example of the kind of model we are trying to create in South East Asia, but with the emphasis on capacity building, socio-economic outputs and developing policy and strategy rather than technical outputs.”
Dr Garniati added: “We also hope that SEAMEC will play a significant role in opening up knowledge exchange between renewable energy expertise in the northern and southern hemispheres to identify new materials, methods and fabrication processes appropriate for a very different marine environment.”
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