Richard Yemm Wins Award for Outstanding Contribution to Industry (UK)

Richard Yemm was presented with the award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry at Thursday evening’s Scottish Green Energy Awards in Edinburgh. The award from Scottish Renewables was sponsored by Highlands & Islands Enterprise and recognises exceptional contribution to the renewables industry.

In the announcement of the award, Scottish Renewables recognised Richard’s long standing and profound contribution to the renewables industry and wave energy in particular. Richard’s career in renewables began in the wind sector, with a novel design of wind turbine blade dampers that enabled extended manufacturing of blades in Glenrothes by overcoming an industry-wide vibration problem. While studying for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh under Professor Stephen Salter, Richard formed the first ideas of the Pelamis wave energy converter and established Pelamis Wave Power in 1998.

Richard has spent the last 13 years developing and commercialising the Pelamis with involvement from the drawing board to the board room and from the wave-tank to the high seas. Under his leadership, Pelamis achieved the first grid electricity from offshore waves, Scotland’s first export order for wave energy technology, and the UK’s only sales for wave energy converters to utilities E.ON and ScottishPower Renewables. These machines are demonstrating the cutting edge of wave energy in preparation for scale manufacturing and deployment.

Richard has also been active in political lobbying and was a driving vision behind the creation of the European Marine Energy Centre and the Marine Supply Obligation, which subsequently led to the 5ROCs market responsible for driving investment into the sector. He had the privilege of chairing Scottish Renewables through its formative years, helping to shape the combination of high ambition and pragmatic realism that has made Scottish Renewables such a success.

Richard Yemm said: “I am really honoured to receive this award and am proud to be working in the renewable industry in Scotland at a time that so much progress is being made by so many outstanding people and organisations.

 “Behind any individual award there is always a huge team effort – Pelamis and the industry could not have achieved this much without a whole team of tremendously talented and dedicated people, and without the huge support we have been offered by our visionary investors, customers, supply chain and Government”.

 Pelamis featured in another award of the evening, as E.ON UK won the Scottish Green Energy Award for Best Project. This award recognised the visionary step E.ON have taken as the first utility company to order and operate a wave energy converter in the UK. The involvement and on-going support of E.ON in this Pelamis project is the biggest step towards commercial large scale deployment yet taken, and is now strengthened by the unique collaboration between E.ON and ScottishPower Renewables in the tandem testing of their two Pelamis machines at EMEC.

The 10th annual Scottish Green Energy Awards were held on the 1st of December in Edinburgh’s recently re-opened National Museum of Scotland. Over 950 representatives from across the Scottish renewables industry attended the ceremony, which was hosted by BBC presenter Kaye Adams.

Niall Stuart, Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, said: “The winners reflect the huge strength in Scotland’s renewable energy industry, and the range of different types of projects from new community wind developments to cutting-edge wave and tidal devices. All of them will make their own important contribution to Scotland’s ambitions for renewables and in creating jobs, promoting investment and in cutting carbon emissions over the coming years.”

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Offshore WIND staff, December 02, 2011; Image: pelamiswave