Nial MacCollam is a former petroleum industry technologist who made a leap of faith into the world of green energy barely a handful of years ago. Today, this one-time Exxon employee is a senior at fast-growing energy services group Senergy, of Aberdeen, and responsible for its renewable business.

A massive market that should soak up the capacity of several UK offshore fabrication yards and create thousands of long-term jobs in the manufacture of offshore wind-turbine substructures is there for the taking.

Burntisland Fabrications is the sole surviving active offshore fabrication yard in Scotland geared up to building large structures for the oil&gas industry.

THE EC 7th Framework Programme project, GILDED (Governance, Infrastructure, Lifestyle Dynamics and Energy Demand: European Post-Carbon Communities), has finally been launched.

ScottishPower is among the leading renewables protagonists in the UK, with an ambitious investment programme – primarily in on and offshore wind. But the group is also ploughing money into marine renewables in the hope that wave and tide will make a viable contribution to Britain’s long-term electricity requirements.

Typing “tidal turbine” into the world’s favourite search engine generates 500,000 hits in less than a quarter of a second and throws up a range of devices, some developed and proven, many no more than speculative artist’s impressions.

A WAVE energy converter developed by Aquamarine has generated power for the first time using a full-scale test rig onshore. The device, known as Oyster, produced and exported electricity to the grid at the UK’s New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) near Newcastle.

Passenger jets cruise at 10,700m (35,000ft) without a hiccup; in the US, catfish farmers lease ponds to biofuels entrepreneurs and venture capitalists sink $1billion or so into the lure of infinite green crude.

Aberdeen-based subsea construction company Subocean Group has invested almost £16million in cable-laying equipment and the refit and mobilisation of a chartered cable-laying barge to meet growing demand from offshore wind developers.

The time has never been better for Aberdeen to engage with the renewables industry, and it is critical that it does so: both for the local economy and the effective deployment of renewable, especially in the maritime environment.

CHINA will have 100 gigawatts of wind-power capacity by 2020 – more than three times the 30GW target the government laid down in an energy strategy drawn up just 18 months ago.