Southern North Sea Energy Alliance launched at Offshore Energy 2018

Team Humber Marine Alliance, Amsterdam Ymuiden Offshore Ports, East of England Energy Group and North Sea Energy Gateway Den Helder have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation on October 23 at the Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference 2018 in the Netherlands.

Photo: Nadja Skopljak, Navingo.

The cooperation will be branded under the name Southern North Sea Energy Alliance (SNSEA).

The four regions are neighbouring the Southern North Sea. Each of the four parties represents the offshore energy economic ecosystem in their region. Members and stakeholders of the four parties are commercial and non-profit companies in the supply chain, educational institutions, research institutes and organisations and governmental bodies. The collaboration has the prime purpose of supporting the members of each organisation.

The MOU provides a framework to pursue closer working relations on promoting the Southern North Sea regions as an offshore and marine energy hub and to foster joint projects between the parties and their members and stakeholders.

The four parties seek opportunities for collaboration and joint marketing with the purpose to promote formal and informal co-operation between their members and stakeholders, with the aim of bringing more business, investments and employment to the regions involved and bridging knowledge, innovation and competencies.

Opening markets in both directions, encouraging the exchange of knowledge and best practices and networking where the four parties strive to collaborate and innovate, they stated earlier.

Mark O’Reilly, Team Humber Marine Alliance chief executive, said that the opportunities for Humber companies were immense. “The Southern North Sea is hugely significant in terms of existing and planned offshore wind farms, but we are also saying it could become the innovative ‘energy garden’ or ‘living field lab’ of Western Europe due to a high concentration of oil and gas assets which will be decommissioned or abandoned over the next decade along with the great potential for carbon capture and storage, wave & tidal, energy transmission & storage and other emerging technologies.”

He said that the MOU was a culmination of months of work in which the parties had agreed a strategy to ensure that their respective regions benefited from the massive potential of the Southern North Sea – which is bordered by the Humber, East Anglia and the Netherlands.

“Over the last few months we have been pressing the point to companies based in the Humber that the opportunities in offshore renewables is much greater than the work we are seeing on our doorstep. By joining forces, the regions of the four partners in SNSEA have the opportunity to become part of the key energy offshore energy hub for Western Europe and grow as a world leader in the offshore and marine energy innovation,” O’Reilly said.