Knowledge Transfer Partnership Targeted Call: Developing the Offshore Renewable Energy Supply Chain
The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and NERC would like to announce a call for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) in the field of offshore renewable energy. The aim of this targeted call is to stimulate and support innovation in the offshore renewable energy supply chain.
Both the TSB and NERC are looking to support KTPs that will help the industry address challenges associated with cost reduction and risks in deployment. This includes both technology development and minimising environmental impact.
NERC specifically wishes to encourage and facilitate partnerships between businesses and environmental scientists to help eliminate risk in the consenting and deployment processes by using NERC science to better understand, minimise and 'design out' environmental impacts at an early stage.
NERC funding will be directed towards applications which, make use of and apply existing NERC funded research to address (but are not limited to) the following areas:
Underwater Noise: Integrated systems for monitoring ambient and device/array noise; technologies to deter and study exposure to construction (especially pile-driving) and longer term chronic exposure to noise
Marine life collision risk: Models and risk based approaches to assess, predict and manage collision risks for both individual species and population scale effects (mammals, birds, fish).
Data Access & Management: Autonomous environmental data collection technologies, data management, real-time environmental information for decision support systems.
Cost-effective monitoring: Development of surveying and monitoring technologies; autonomous/unmanned underwater vehicles or remote sensing applications for resource assessment, analysis and monitoring.
Cumulative Impact assessment: Tools and guidance to inform businesses in decision making.
KTP projects can last between 6 and 36 months. We expect the KTP projects in this targeted call to last for typically 24 months, although shorter or longer timescales will be considered on their merit.
The closing date for this call is noon on 24 April 2013. Successful applications will be announced in June 2013.
A webinar to help potential applicants find out more about KTPs and the current call was held on 8 February 2013. A recording of the webinar 
can be accessed on the TSB Website. Within the webinar Wendy Mannix, from the TSB and Jan Stringer, KTP Advisor, gave an introduction to KTP and the scope of the call; Annie Linley, the NERC Marine Renewable Energy Knowledge Exchange Programme Manager, explained the priority areas, that NERC would like to address via the call.
Further information and details on how to apply to this call are available in a briefing note downloadable from the TSB website .
General information on the TSB's KTP scheme can be found on the Knowledge Transfer Partnership website .