Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much money the Government has invested in wave and tidal stream technologies since 2010.

There is no single data repository for historical information on cross-government investment into energy research, development and demonstration (RD&D). The best available record of government investment in renewable energy technologies is the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Energy Technology RD&D Budget Database, which this Department and its predecessor (Department of Energy and Climate Change) contribute to. The IEA’s database allows users to track trends in spending by energy technology in IEA countries back to 1974 and can be found at: http://www.iea.org/statistics/rdd/.

However, including other spending beyond that included in the IEA statistics, since 2008, the Government has invested over £60m in marine energy research, development, demonstration and deployment contributing towards both wave and tidal stream energy.