Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent discussions he has had with the European Marine Energy Centre on the UK Government providing funding to replace the existing EU funding stream the Centre utilises.

The Government has not held any talks with EMEC regarding replacement funding for the EU funding the centre currently utilises. EMEC was established through support from the UK Government in 2003 in Orkney. The Government has a long history of supporting the development and deployment of wave and tidal stream technologies in the UK. Since 2003 various bodies across Government have provided innovation/R&D funding of £175m to the wave and tidal sectors (almost £80m since 2010).