The urgent necessity to mitigate global warming effects is creating a challenging pressure on the renewable energy sector. Innovative technologies are necessary to integrate traditional sources and deliver a reliable energy mix. The upscaling of plants to deliver utility-scale production, determines increasing issues for soil consumption, impacts on other activities, and social acceptance.

Delocalization at sea of traditional sources like wind and solar-photovoltaic by dedicated floating offshore structures is found as a near-term solution. Moreover, the oceans also represent a theoretically unlimited and still largely untapped source of renewable energy from waves, tides, salinity, thermal gradients and other forms.

The exploitation of traditional as well as innovative renewable energy sources in the harsh offshore environment involves a variety of technical challenges. The access to hydrodynamic testing infrastructures is recognized as a primary enabling factor for the development, assessment, demonstration of energy harvesting devices.

In this context, new opportunities and new challenges are arising for existing infrastructures, and the Hydro Testing Forum provides a natural ground to address this new and exciting scenario.

A dedicated CoP on marine renewable energy systems can bring together the expertise of HTF partners, to review present and future needs of sector stakeholders, and discuss how to improve and innovate testing procedures, techniques and infrastructures to adequately support the maturation of the offshore renewable energy sector.