What is a decade between friends?
In September 2004, OREG was incorporated with a mission to stimulate ocean energy development. The focus and voice that has become Marine Renewables Canada has been an active player with energy technology developers, utilities, governments, and the research community. We have held hands with start-up companies and advised and nurtured them through some heading seas. We have pursued a Canadian strategy to create value out of a world ocean industry, engaged governments, attracted funding, influenced clean energy policies and legislation, and we have seen a few retreats with changing political agendas. But through three changes in government, we have worked with Nova Scotia to move the tidal potential of the Bay of Fundy to the point of five strategic tidal development consortia being a world focus for development of the tidal sector.
Yes, we lament lost opportunity and the time distracted and the cost that delays have impacted on Canadian businesses, but the reality is that the financial challenges, the scale of the funding needed for meaningful projects and the challenge to define a longer-term market pathway, have held back those in our collaborating nations as well. But our focus on demonstrating an industrial solution that might be recognized by a utility and project developer sector has worked for the tidal sector, in the advancements we now see in Nova Scotia.