ORE Catapult is the UK’s leading technology innovation and research centre for offshore renewable energy. Established in 2013 by the UK Government, ORE is part of a network of Catapults set up by InnovateUK in high growth industries. Its mission is to deliver the UK’s largest clean growth opportunity by accelerating the creation and growth of UK companies in offshore renewable energy.
Supporting our client, Frontier Economics (Frontier), Frazer-Nash supplied the technical analysis of a range of offshore wind research and development projects aimed at deploying new technologies for the sector. This provided the engineering expertise and technical insight for Frontier’s economic impact evaluation of the ten-year period from the creation of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult by Innovate UK to accelerate the development of offshore renewable energy technologies in the UK.
Focusing on the impact of ORE Catapult’s innovation support activities to drive economic benefit, the research found that the Catapult’s work to foster connections with innovative UK companies in the offshore renewable energy sector led to collaborative projects worth 469 million GBP. The research also found that within the period a sample cohort of 267 UK companies supported by ORE Catapult reported 55% increased employment, equating to 5,400 jobs and 111% increase in turnover, and that almost all (96%) of the supported companies said that that they were able to progress their technology further or faster thanks to ORE Catapult support.
Nial Greeves, Market Director, Energy and Infrastructure at Frazer-Nash Consultancy said: “At Frazer-Nash, we are world-renowned for our expertise in derisking and driving performance in offshore wind technology. We were proud that the technology and engineering analysis of our experts made a significant contribution to our client Frontier Economics’ evaluation which demonstrated the benefit of the UK government’s investment in clean energy innovation, and ORE Catapult’s part in keeping UK offshore wind technology pioneers in the vanguard of this sector globally.”
Andrew Leicester, Director, Frontier Economics said: “Over the last decade, ORE Catapult has been a great example of a long-term commitment by the UK government to fund clean energy innovation. Our evaluation uses comprehensive data and rigorous analysis to demonstrate the benefits of ORE Catapult’s investments, expertise, and activities. By looking at impacts over an extended period, we have been able to provide robust evidence of the long-term economic benefits such as employment creation and productivity which are often hard to evidence in impact evaluations. We have also been able to follow examples of ORE Catapult support over many years to illustrate how and why benefits are realised.”
