Ann: CETO Project Update , page-11

"shortly"! It's hard not to be excited by that word, even though it's still irritatingly open to interpretation.

The question that is difficult to answer is which international site? Of the "current sites" (not including the "investigation sites") there really isnt enough public info to judge the claims of Ireland or Canada and Bermuda seems locked into having a 2MW test site followed by a further 18MW once the 2MW is proven - so it wouldnt be initially committing to anything bigger than the Garden Island or Reunion Island sites.

I banged on about the French in my last post but one of the phrases in today's announcement made me more convinced it will be a French site. It was the phrase: "Some of these sites also involve mandated Government support for renewable energy generally and wave energy specifically."

The document below makes reference to a mandated target for the sector in France. (The whole document is 71 pages long but there's a short and very compelling section on Marine Energy that's easy to read):

http://www.legrenelle-mer.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/Livre_bleu_anglais_web.pdf

The key parts for me at this stage in CETO's development are:

** "1.d. Reserve a place for marine energy in the energy package. Focus on ensuring proportionality between marine and terrestrial renewable energy. Support the development of sources of intermittent renewable energy (wave energy converters and offshore wind farms) by pre-reserving a share (limit set by decree) for intermittent energy in the power supplied to the electricity network, and by systematically preparing risk-benefit impact studies."

** "2.a. The urgent introduction of provisions enabling the financing of demonstrators and associated logistical structures in all industries (marine turbines, wave energy converters, ocean thermal energy, floating wind turbines) in order to accelerate the development of these technologies and enable the most promising to be selected for the deployment phase."

** "2.c. The early deployment of these technologies being encouraged by attractive schemes suiting the maturity of each technology (launch of invitations to tender, introduction of buyback prices etc)."

** "3.a. Favour overseas collectivities and regions for the early deployment of marine energy technologies, which will help to avoid the loss of built-up and agricultural areas due to the development of photovoltaics; they are also well adapted to the very restricted electricity system in the islands (less intermittent and more predictable than solar or onshore wind energy)."

Of the possible French sites, there is virtually no info readily available on the "Ile d Yeu" site or French Polynesia, so Reunion Island is the obvious choice. However, I do wonder if the French government would provide more funding for a site that hasn't yet utilised the $5mill grant it has only recently been given. Then again, perhaps the French/Reunion govts always wanted a 40MW or so project at Reunion Island but knew CWE's expertise could not be stetched to two major sites (Australia & International) and couple of smaller ones at the same time, so they settled for a smaller goal. Now that a large scale Oz site is off the radar in the short term, perhaps they're keen to jump in with what they would have preferred - a large scale site at Reunion.

Who knows? Only time will tell, but if "shortly" means months (rather that weeks or days), then i wish CWE would not announce that they are about to announce something, whatever the timeframe!