Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Ltd.

My name is Tom Quinn, Director of Strategy.

And I'm Emily Rees, Head of Analysis and Insights at ORE Catapult, the UK's leading research and innovation center for offshore renewables.

So as we did last year, we're going to be having a discussion around floating wind in today's episode since the annual Floating Offshore Wind 2026 Conference in Aberdeen is coming up on the 7th and 8th of October.

Floating offshore wind is still one of the most exciting opportunities in the energy transition, and specifically presents an economic opportunity for Scotland.

Yeah, exactly, Tom.

I mean, hybrid and deep water offshore wind concepts, which combine elements of fixed and floating designs, could act as a stepping stone between fixed and floating offshore wind, and potentially hold the key to bridging the gap that we need to cross and realize floating wind's full potential.

So we've got some interesting topics to dig into today, and we're really pleased to invite Angela Hepworth, the Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, and Jason Paterson, the Strategic Theme Lead of Deepwater Wind here at ORE Catapult, to join us today.

Angela, Jason, welcome to Re-energise.

Nobody knows where the marine mammals are necessarily, and nobody knows how noisy it is in the water.

Well, our friends at ORE Catapult are going to spend 2.7 million pounds to find out.

And it has placed 21 listening devices on the seafloor.

And they're recording 24 hours a day to understand what is happening with the marine mammals.

So yeah, we're lucky that there are these programs out there that help sort of overcome those barriers.

So that was the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult in the UK.

We went through a number of projects and programs with them, which did help us along.

As I say, we had some commercial traction, but they also helped those people that need to show some sort of maturity before anybody will take a chance on them.