Updating our roadmap

A structuring document

France Energies Marines’ scientific and technical roadmap is a document that has structured the Institute’s R&D activities since its creation. It guides us in our project development. Each of the four programmes is dealt with in terms of axes and sub-axes. For each of the sub-axes, the context, the industrial challenges, and the R&D strategy for the next five years are described. The roadmap is written jointly by our team and our members. It is assessed by our Scientific and Technological Committee, made up of eight independent and international experts, and validated by the General Assembly.

Regular revisions

The first roadmap was prepared when the application for the call for proposals for the French Institutes of Excellence in Decarbon Energy was drawn up. It has been revised twice since then. In 2021, we have completely revised it, in synergy with the preparation of our evaluation by the French High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education. This document is regularly updated because the priorities of the ORE sector are evolving, the industrial issues are changing according to the maturity of the sector and several barriers are regularly lifted thanks to the R&D projects that are carried out.

The main changes in the 2021 version

In view of the evolution of the French ORE sector over the last five years, the 2021 roadmap is dominated by topics related to the development of offshore wind energy. We will focus our efforts on the characterisation of offshore winds and atmospheric turbulence, while maintaining the work related to the observation and modelling of waves and extreme winds. The latter will be approached through the prism of climate change. As regards the dimensioning and monitoring of systems, the subject of digital twins of floating wind turbines will be expanded, without neglecting studies on dynamic cables and anchors. At the farm scale, the optimisation of offshore operations appears crucial to drastically reduce the cost of floating wind. Solutions for storing and transforming the energy produced at sea into hydrogen are also a growing theme. In terms of environmental integration, the interactions between ORE farms and megafauna, from the individual scale to the population scale, are at the heart of the sector’s concerns. Modelling the cumulative effects of ORE and other human activities on ecosystems, in a context of climate change, is an innovative approach favoured by the sector’s players.

Download our 2021 roadmap (PDF)

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