End of term for the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition

The Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Final Showcase has just been held in Portsmouth. The Green Edge was there.

Yesterday (24th May), Green Edge had the pleasure of attending the final showcase for Innovate UK’s Clean Marine Demonstration Competition (CMDC). Hosted at Portsmouth International Port (PIP) - which was showcasing its own SHAPE UK project as one of the CMDC winners - the event was attended by around 320 people representing the 55 projects, 208 project partners and £33.5m invested, as well as interested observers such as this writer. The end-of-project reports - some 2000-odd pages of them in total - are currently sitting in Innovate UK’s bedtime reading stack and will be made public, no doubt, in due course.

Image: BMI with thanks to PIP and SHAPE UK

The keynote address, by Maritime Minister Robert Courts, coincided with his parliamentary statement, which provides more detail on UK SHORE (Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions), announced in March. UK SHORE is making £206m of funds available over the next few years and the minister outlined the six key intervention areas as being:

1. A new round of the CMDC;

2. Feasibility studies exploring green shipping corridors to implement the commitments of the Clydebank Declaration for Green Shipping Corridors;

3. Partnering with DfE’s UK Shipbuilding Skills Taskforce on net zero shipping upskilling programmes;

4. Supporting the greening of domestic ferry routes;

5. Setting out plans for a Centre for Smart Shipping (CSmart), as committed to in the Maritime 2050 Strategy;

6. Grant schemes for university research projects, in partnership with the UKRI Supergen programme and marine industrial stakeholders.

So, we now have CMDC1 just closing and the new CMDC2 just opening (its closing date for proposals is 13th July). Is CMDC2 then, aimed at a roll-out of CMDC1? It doesn’t seem so. For a start, the CMDC2 funding pot is quite a bit smaller - £12m as opposed to £23m for its predecessor. And, while CMDC1 had a wide slate of themes on offer - ranging from on-vessel low/zero emission technologies, to vessel propulsions of all types (from batteries to kites), to port and shore-side solutions, to smart shipping technologies - CMDC2 appears much more focused. The second competition even goes so far as to put forward its list of prioritised technology themes: hydrogen internal combustion engines; whole-ship energy efficiency; safe on-board storage of hydrogen and ammonia; larger marinised fuel cell systems; small craft alternative for fuel bunkering and charging; and - for feasibility studies in Strand 1 - green shipping corridors¹.

Signs of increased focus on the Ten Point Plan, then, as well as commitments coming out of COP26? We think so. But while we can see some of the first round projects - like some of the 10 or so focused on hydrogen - potentially lining up for the second round, it has to be said that one sensed a little frustration talking to some of the others. Having worked like the blazes in the tight timescales set (really only six months between contract finalisations and end of project), quite a few of them may now have to wait for later CMDC ladles from the UK SHORE cauldron if they are looking for further funding to move their projects on. At least one project we talked to is committed to carrying on under its own steam, while a suggestion from Green Edge to Innovate UK that de-mobilising multi-partner projects may find it difficult to re-mobilise after an extended layoff drew slightly mystified looks and perhaps even a touch of hostility. Sorry, Innovate UK, just saying.

It will be interesting to see which consortia come through into this one. We’ll know in September.

---

…just one more thing afore ye go. The Green Edge is looking for sponsors. We’re not asking for much; just enough to ensure we keep our newsletter free for subscribers and build on our plans for more research, analysis and guest content.

Your support will be much valued by us and will help us greatly with our plans for developing The Green Edge.

Thank you.

1. We should stress there are other themes as well, in addition to the priority technologies.  For the full list see the competition websites for CMDC2 Strand 1 (feasibility studies and demonstrators) and Strand 2 (pre-deployment).