Eco Wave Power has been granted approval from the Portuguese government for the installation and connection to the grid of its pilot 1 MW wave energy project. It will be undertaken by Wave Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of Israel and Sweden-headquartered Eco Wave Power, which will deploy the project on the ocean side of the Barra do Douro breakwater in Porto.
As part of its National Energy-Climate Plan 2030, Portugal has set a target to increase its renewable energy capacity to 47% of the total energy mix by deploying up to 29 GW of RE capacity. Up to 70 MW of that target is expected to come from wave energy.
The Barra do Douro project will be the first of a series of rollouts that are part of an agreement signed with the Administration of the Ports of Douro, Leixões and Viana do Castelo in April 2020. The agreement stipulates the deployment of 20 MW of wave energy capacity across four locations.
The Portuguese government estimates that wave energy has the potential to produce 34 GW of clean capacity and can therefore play an important role in the decarbonisation of the electricity sector.
