Scotland's marine energy sector is to benefit from £6m of funding to further develop testing of new wave and tidal energy prototypes.

The announcement comes as Scottish Enterprise launched the third round of the remaining competitive funding from the initial WATERS fund, in collaboration with the Highlands & Islands Enterprise.

The latest round follows the success of WATERS 1 and 2 where six marine energy developers benefitted from £14.8m of funding for projects. To reduce the cost of developing wave and tidal technologies, the WATERS 3 call will promote research and development activities in Scotland, aimed at bringing leading marine energy devices to commercial application and to enable Scottish developers and supply chain companies to capture an increased share of the growing UK, European and global marine energy market.

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Energy Minister Fergus Ewing said: "Scotland is leading the world in the development of marine renewable energy. We are at the forefront of developing offshore and low carbon energy generation technology with some of the world's greatest wind, wave and tidal resources heavily concentrated in the waters around our country.

"This latest funding round follows the success of our earlier WATERS support to help developers bring their devices to full-scale testing. The WATERS complements our other funding initiatives and incentives we have in place such as the £18 million Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund, the Renewable Energy Investment Fund and the Saltire Prize.

"Our ambition for Scotland's emerging wave and tidal sector remains great. We know that the successful harnessing of ocean power takes hard work and persistence and the Scottish Government is determined to support those within the industry."

(JP)