Welsh renewable company, Tidal Energy Ltd, has been awarded £390,000 by the Carbon Trust to help fund environmental monitoring work off the Pembrokeshire coast. TEL will make environmental assessment data available to the wider marine energy industry.

The grant from the Carbon Trust’s Entrepreneurs Fast Track Programme, comes after TEL announced an £11m funding package for the manufacture and deployment of its 1.2 MW DeltaStream device.

DeltaStream sits on the seabed and generates electricity from three separate horizontal axis turbines mounted on a frame.

TEL hopes that the Carbon Trust-funded environmental assessment work will help the wider Welsh marine energy industry to grow.

Chris Williams, development director at Tidal Energy Ltd, said: “The Welsh Government believes that the deployment of tidal and wave devices off the nation’s 1200km coastline could provide as much as 4GW of clean, predictable electricity by as early as 2025. We believe our device can combine high efficiency and portability with the crucial advantage of being environmentally benign.”