Abstract
The provincial government of Nova Scotia, Canada, has provided numerous incentives for developing in-stream tidal energy projects since 2009. These incentives include co-operatively funding the development of the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy with the Canadian federal government and industry partners, extensive funding of environmental impacts monitoring research for tidal energy projects, and offering direct financial incentives for tidal power produced and sold to the grid via feed-in tariffs. However, the provincial government has not treated all scales and types of tidal energy projects equally. Until recently, ambitious targets for hundreds of MW of tidal development by 2020–2025 led to tidal support policies focusing on large, utility-scale projects, with little evidence the tidal energy sector was prepared to pursue such projects in Nova Scotia or elsewhere. Some support was offered to smaller-scale, community-oriented tidal energy projects, but the rules and regulations for such projects were repeatedly changed (and sometimes revoked) between 2012 and 2018. Since the provincial legislature passed the revised Marine Renewable-electricity Act of 2018, a potentially more coherent and consistent tidal energy policy consensus appears to be forming in the province. This paper provides a review of the policies introduced, projects approved and canceled, and sectoral outlook for tidal energy development in Nova Scotia for the period 2009–2018.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 103743 |
| Journal | Marine Policy |
| Volume | 113 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:A few weeks after ICOE [ 40 , 41 ], in December, a workshop focused on the challenges and potential for small-scale tidal energy development in Nova Scotia was hosted in Halifax, sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [ 60 ]. The workshop was much smaller than ICOE, with fewer than 50 participants, but had academics in attendance from universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, and Manitoba, as well as the United Kingdom. There were also representatives present from Marine Renewables Canada, the federal Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the provincial government, environmental and marine services companies, and tidal energy developers. The workshop's final report [ 60 ] called for the development of a small-scale tidal energy testing site for research and demonstration projects within Nova Scotia. Many of the workshop attendees signed funding commitments (either cash or in-kind contributions) following the workshop, but support from the provincial government and the OERA was withheld in summer 2015, so no small-scale tidal test site was developed in the province. Recently, there have been signs of renewed interest in small-scale tidal energy development in Nova Scotia. In November 2017, the OERA awarded a contract for a study to establish whether a business case existed for a small-scale tidal energy test facility in Nova Scotia [ 61 ]. Through interviews with in-stream tidal firms, literature review, and market analysis, this report found that a significant gap exists for small-to-medium-scale tidal testing facilities worldwide. This gap is most apparent for sites with tidal velocities between 2 and 4 m/s, with water depths between 10 and 30 m ([ 61 ]; p. 7). The authors identified a number of sites within the Nova Scotia portion of the Bay of Fundy with these characteristics ([ 61 ]; p.26–27); Grand Passage and Petit Passage were considered the best cases. An analysis of the socioeconomic impacts of such a testing facility was also conducted, with an emphasis on ways to reduce the financial risk of infrastructure investment and developing a secure revenue stream for a testing centre. MacDougall et al. [ 61 ] make the case that a small-scale in-stream tidal testing centre in Nova Scotia could fill an important niche in the global and Canadian tidal energy sectors, through providing a test centre with intermediate operating conditions between the existing low-flow/shallow water small-scale facilities and the full utility-scale/deep water facilities available elsewhere. Such a centre could also provide proof-of-concept for community-scale tidal energy projects, which would be particularly relevant for off-grid coastal communities around the world [ 61 ]. In July of 2018, Black Rock Tidal Power applied for a small-scale test facility permit for installation at Grand Passage [ 62 ]. Approved in September 2018 for at most six months of operations, a 280 kW platform was installed on September 18th. The results of this test are intended to allow a “progressive development” by Black Rock Tidal Power ([ 62 ]; p.1), and will inform future deployments of their tidal devices. This reinforces the 2017 decision of Black Rock's parent company, Schottel Hydro, to refocus on smaller-scale projects [ 63 ]. It should be noted that some of the research funding noted in Table 1 contributed to small tidal research. The two most significant funding expenditures included in Table 1 for small tidal are the aforementioned small-scale tidal energy test facility feasibility study of MacDougall et al. [ 61 ]; and the Southwest Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island Strategic Environmental Assessments [ 33 , 34 ]. Less directly, small tidal developers are likely to benefit from the resource and environmental characterisation work being funded by the OERA, as well as the socioeconomic and technology development research, as some of the lessons of this research may be transferable between large and small scale projects. However, the OERA has not yet explicitly funded small-scale tidal technology development projects, only scale tests intended for larger deployments. 2.3.4
Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship , from the Province of Nova Scotia. The funding organisation had no involvement in the research design nor its results.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship, from the Province of Nova Scotia. The funding organisation had no involvement in the research design nor its results.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Aquatic Science
- General Environmental Science
- Economics and Econometrics
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
- Law
