Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are playing a significant role in the EU energy system, contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions and improving the diversification of energy supplies, which reduces dependency on fossil fuel markets. In this context, Ocean Energy is a renewable, abundant, predictable and geographically diverse energy with high potential to add substantial value to the EU energy system. Besides its huge potential and predictability, another important benefit is the fact that ocean energy installations are likely to face much less severe space constrains for installation compared to onshore RES technologies. Regarding ocean energy, wave energy is the ocean energy type with highest deployment potential in EU waters. However, although the potential of wave energy is huge, all MW installed of wave energy are in R&D phase due to several technology, market, administrative and environmental issues.
The general objective of BUTTERFLY project is focused on the development, demonstration and further commercialization of an efficient system that harvest the ocean energy from waves to produce cost-competitive and sustainable electricity.