Workshops will be held on Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11, 2026 and are included in the delegate registration. When registering for the conference, please indicate which workshops you will be participating in.
Workshops include:
a) Workshop on Environmental Effects of Remote Community Marine Energy- Ocean Energy Systems (OES)
Worldwide most research and monitoring for marine energy devices have sought to understand effects that will drive regulatory decisions for continental grid-scale devices. However, we know that many near-term and likely long-term uses of marine energy will be to power remote coastal and island communities.
This workshop will provide some background on remote community uses, and will focus on interactive sessions that examine and discuss environmental effects of remote marine energy applications with use cases that:
- Provide power for an island community – OTEC
- Provide power for a remote coastal community – wave energy
Please join Ocean Energy Systems – Environmental (https://tethys.pnnl.gov/about-oes-environmental) to explore the environmental effects that might be expected from OTEC and wave energy devices, and to determine what additional information is needed to streamline regulatory permission for these devices.
b) Workshop on International Standards and Certification- Lloyd’s Register and Streamwise Developments
For decades, the marine energy sector has pushed through tough realities, from prototypes lost to the sea to promising pilot projects unable to break into the market. Yet each challenge has brought clarity, strengthening our understanding of the technical, economic, and regulatory hurdles that must be overcome. This progress has led to the creation and improvement of IEC standards for marine energy conversion systems, vital building blocks for a more resilient, scalable future.
But standards alone aren’t enough. Accelerating commercialisation ultimately depends on one thing above all: Trust. Trust in the technologies, trust in the data, and, crucially, trust in independent, internationally recognised conformity assessment systems that verify performance. This is where the IECRE conformity assessment system plays a vital role. Through the verification of designs by its accepted certification bodies and the validation of test results by its accepted test facilities, it ensures that performance claims are credible, robust, transparent, and globally accepted. This internationally recognised framework gives developers, regulators, and investors the confidence they need to progress from prototypes to products, and from pilot projects to profitable deployments.
c) From Research to Real-World Impact in Marine Energy- – European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) and Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE)
This interactive workshop explores how marine energy test centres have evolved into critical applied research partners within the marine energy ecosystem. As environmental monitoring, data requirements, and regulatory expectations have matured, test centres are no longer simply demonstration sites—they now operate at the intersection of research, deployment, and policy. Equipped with permanent infrastructure, advanced instrumentation, and direct access to live deployments, they are uniquely positioned to support high-impact, real-world research in partnership with academic institutions.
Using examples from collaborative initiatives such as the Ocean Sensor Innovation Platforms (OSIP) and international marine energy test centres, the session will examine how these platforms generate shared datasets, validate technologies, inform regulation, and aim to de-risk commercial deployment.
Participants will gain insight into how researchers can engage directly with test centres to align academic work with live industry challenges, accelerate knowledge transfer, and contribute to the responsible advancement of marine energy toward commercial scale.