Liberación y seguimiento del proceso

Actors contributing to this function included individual entrepreneurs (including technical and commercial entrepreneurs), researchers in institutions and corporate entrepreneurs. Critical supporting roles were played by funding bodies and industry bodies.

The type of entrepreneurial activity and the actors typically undertaking them were closely related, as shown in Table 5-1.

Type of

entrepreneur Typical activities Wind vs Tidal Stream

and Wave

Individual “Inventor” – early stage

technology development, initial fund raising (friends and family, grants), patenting

Dominates in wave and tidal stream; wind benefitted from onshore wind forebears. Main focus is technical.

Small corporate Further technology

development, early project Early offshore wind projects were dominated

to large corporates.

Focus technical and commercial, regulatory framework evolving Large corporate Medium to large scale project

development, refinancing Entrepreneurialism by large corporates focussed on commercial, including refinancing through sale of interests to financial investors and development of supply chain opportunities Support

organisations Funding support, facilitating joint projects, test centres (eg EMEC)

Support organisations dedicating support as appropriate to TRL, regulatory framework evolved

Government Development of regulatory and

licensing framework Framework co-evolved with technology

Table 5-1: Types of entrepreneur and activities (author’s analysis)

The emergence and motivations of these actors were attributed to a range of factors. They ranged from individual inventors working on an energy capture technology or ancillary system just because they wanted to show it could be done (WTG15), to large corporates devoting time and resource to entrepreneurial activity with the aim of building a leadership position in an emerging new sector (SC56), or because participation in the energy transition was seen as existential (SO60), and even in response to overt or subtle Government pressure (SO34):

“These were enthusiastic engineers, and academics in some cases, who just wanted to demonstrate that it could be done.” - WTG15

“Ørsted for example have been very much the entrepreneurial spirit in terms of the sector - put it this way, I don't think without Ørsted first mover advantage - I don't think we'd have been at £57.50/MWh [CfD strike price]

today. If we didn't have a dominant market player of Ørsted's standing and vision.” – SC56

“I can see for the big established players that…unless you change your business model you might not be there.” – SO60

“There was real pressure from the Scottish Government on companies wishing to work in Scotland to take an interest in these emerging technologies” – SO34

This is the first explicit example of interplay between the functions – Government pressure, or at least Government making its desires explicit, is a clear example of F4 – Guidance of the Search (see Section 5.5).

5.2.2.2 Institutions

Interviewees related that entrepreneurial activities involved a full range of institutions [87], including the “hard” institutions which provide support for entrepreneurial activities across the renewables sector and “soft” institutions such as the general cultural approval for entrepreneurial activities in the country.

“Hard Institutions”

Interviewees referred to a number of “hard institutions” which were considered to have been important in the emergence of offshore wind and the development of tidal stream and wave energy. These included the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator programme, other revenue support and grant programmes such as the Renewables Obligation and Contracts for Difference (SO32), UK and Scottish Government grant schemes and European grant support programmes (SO34).

“So you know at the beginning - we had grant funding. You know you could just you know get to a certain amount of grant and then you're helping to build a prototype or demonstration projects, then moving to this other market: the feed in tariff on this renewable obligation which is still providing enough certainty to make it attractive enough for you to invest.” – SO32

“They got a grant - they got some money” – SO34

Additionally, the hard institutions around protection of Intellectual Property were described as important, particularly in the context of the competitive rivalry between technology and project developers:

“This is our IP: It goes right to the heart of our ability to differentiate.” – WTG15

“Soft institutions”

Interviewees described the importance of an entrepreneurial culture, particularly in the context of corporate entrepreneurship:

“It's not an individual entrepreneurship. It's a corporate entrepreneurship supported by a network. But it wouldn't happen without that leadership” - SC10

More widely, the wider social norms supporting entrepreneurial activities, and the societal recognition of a need for decarbonisation of the energy system have been important factors in the emergence of this sector. A recent book – “Energy at the End of the World” [146] describes the soft institutions in operation in Orkney as

“Orkney Ltd”. Orkney is a critical location for the development of tidal stream and wave technologies, as it is the home of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) - a grid-connected and accredited test centre for wave and tidal stream energy generation technologies, used (as of March 2019) by 20 tidal stream and wave developers, from 11 counties and deploying 31 individual devices [147]. EMEC forms the nucleus of an informal network.

EMEC, together with the soft institutions described by Watts, are leading to collaboration across the archipelago to facilitate the development of tidal stream and wave energy. Watts describes how the culture is guides behaviours in Orkney, which she describes as being dominated by a culture of avoiding being “bigsy”.

She says:

“Expressing your personal opinion in public, raising your hand and speaking, is to stand above others and risks being seen as personal aggrandisement and bigsy. Personal opinions are expressed, but in a quiet word after the meeting, in the car park afterward, or in a chance meeting on the street.”

– Watts, page 227 [146]

This culture is one where entrepreneurial activities are enabled, and where creativity and self-determination are commonplace. She describes a local consultant and entrepreneur, Gareth Davies, seeking to rework the local electricity system:

“Rather than being dependent on the national grid and centralized electricity market, he proposes a self-determined, decentralized solution that is appropriate to the place: reconfiguring and reweaving the local energy network with what is to hand.” – Watts, page 350 [146]

The soft institutions are clearly influential in enabling entrepreneurial activities, especially in the marine sector.

5.2.2.3 Networks

The existence of networks within the TIS was considered to be important, as through these networks entrepreneurs were able to communicate and collaborate:

“It's a corporate entrepreneurship supported by a network” – SC10

The leading formal network in offshore wind is the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator [148]– a joint industry project involving the Carbon Trust and nine offshore wind development companies (EnBW, E.ON, Innogy SE, Ørsted, Scottish Power Renewables/Iberdrola, Shell, SSE Renewables, Equinor and Vattenfall), which coordinates joint projects and “aims to reduce the cost of offshore wind, overcome market barriers, develop industry best practice and trigger the development of new industry standards”. The Accelerator has coordinated a number of industry-wide projects, which are discussed further in the sections on Knowledge Development (Section 5.3) and Knowledge Diffusion (Section 5.4).

In the marine sector, the Carbon Trust was influential in funding the early work of the European Marine Energy Centre – the world’s first accredited grid-connected test centre for wave and tidal stream technologies. This forms the hub of a network of marine energy technology developers, and produced the first standards for the marine sector – an important stage in the maturation of this sector:

“So in a more mature space…things like standards and standardisation are quite important and I suppose I see standards being the way of creating a sort of common language within a technology ecosystem” – SH40

Additionally, the looser networks rooted in the industry bodies RenewableUK and Scottish Renewables, and the industry specific groupings provide a linking architecture for actors in these technologies to collaborate. For wind, these networks are the Global Wind Energy Council, the European Wind Energy Association and the EU-supported European Technology and Innovation Platform on Offshore Wind.

At present, there is no clear industry voice expressed through a network body for tidal stream and wave. In the UK, one form of entrepreneurial activity being

a Marine Energy Council, at which the actors can meet and define and implement an agenda for engagement with Government. This is seen as a critical step in making a coherent case for tidal stream to Government, in part as a response to Government’s previously expressed frustrations with the former lack of a united and coherent message from the sector”

“I think…the biggest barrier to market formation is the fact that this industry – I’m talking about tidal particularly – do not speak with one voice.” – MPD72

Speaking about the Marine Energy Council and its engagement with Government regarding potential revenue support, one project developer said:

“I think getting people to agree that this is the system that they could all work within, also has the benefits to government - for them seeing that there will be a number of players in the competition.” - MPD72

Both formal and informal networks exist to help actors with entrepreneurial activities, and they are acting to address industry-wide challenges (e.g. the Offshore Wind Accelerator, Wave Energy Scotland), to talk to Government (e.g.

industry bodies, the Marine Energy Council) and even to help build the legitimacy of offshore wind and marine renewables.