The public universities of the Basque Country, Navarre, and Bordeaux are joining forces in a joint project to create a high-level development and training center in the field of marine renewables.

Generating innovative methods, products, and services from renewable marine resources in the Bay of Biscay. This is the purpose of the “Renewables” project, promoted by the public universities of the Basque Country, Navarre, and Bordeaux, and which will receive European support to create a development center for this type of marine energy technologies in the Euroregion. The project falls under the E-CLEDER research group, in which the Bilbao School of Engineering actively participates.

This milestone of collaboration, which has currently been awarded a small grant of €47,449, has been selected in the second call of 2020 within the “Knowledge Economy” area by the New Aquitaine-Euskadi-Navarra region. Thus, it will serve as support, especially through research staff, to jointly participate in European project calls and train highly qualified professionals in the field of marine energy in different areas: equipment manufacturing, conversion technology, or offshore wind farm management, among others.

The project’s activities focus mainly on a comprehensive sustainability strategy, highlighting adaptation to climate change through resilient design and with the participation of renewable energies. To this end, public universities have the support, in terms of coordination, of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Renewable Energies in the Marine Environment, a pioneering channel in this field and rated 89 points out of 100 by ACEA, an agency of the European Agency.

The initiative looks closely at established projects such as BIMEP, Mutriko, Seeneoh, and Cener, all of them in this European region, and whose importance is vital in the medium to long term. To foster this cooperation system on which the project is based, collaboration between the Chambers of Commerce of the three regions will be encouraged, as well as the interrelation of strategic clusters and regional technological alliances. All of this with one goal: to make marine renewables a focus of technological, social, and economic development for a region that breathes the sea in its economy and society.