On 22nd February, the Basque Government Delegation in Brussels hosted the kick-off meeting of the ELBE project which seeks an alliance between leading marine energy clusters across Europe, with the aim of defining a joint internationalisation strategy.

The ELBE (Europe Leading Blue Energy) project is part of the European Union DG GROWTH "Cluster Go International" programme and has been selected as the only representative of the energy sector during the recent call first stage (Strand1A). This also acknowledges the importance of the bodies represented by these clusters in the current European leadership of marine energy technological development and in particular wave, tidal and floating wind power which are part of this initiative scope.

This project will be implemented by a Consortium including Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (Escocia), Flanders’ Maritime Cluster (Bélgica), Offshoreväst (Suecia) y Offshoreenergy.dk (Dinamarca), under the co-ordination of the Basque Energy Cluster. The purpose of ELBE during the first phase is to forge a formal alliance between participating bodies, and define a joint internationalisation strategy to be launched in the second phase.

Among other activities, this project envisages: a market analysis in the main non-European countries involved in marine energy developments; the alliance participation in international events; and the organisation of several networking events among the companies of the different regions at the end of 2018 and the start of 2019.