Congratulations to Wärtsilä Norway as winner of the ONS Innovation Award 2022 and to Ruden for winning the ONS Innovation Award 2022, SME! The competition has been incredibly hard this year, but the jury managed to decide the winners at last. Ruden and Wärtsilä was awarded at the ONS Conference during the North Seas-session by the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Terje Aasland.
The Innovation Award has been awarded to recognize innovation which may have high impact on the energy system. The first Innovation Award to be presented was in 1982. In 2004 a second category to the Innovation Award, the SME, was added to include small and medium sized enterprises. The winners are decided by the jury, which decides a winner from several criteria.
Jury assessment:
“The main objective of the ONS Innovation Awards is to promote efforts to disrupt, improve or replace current solutions that will make the energy industry more competitive and sustainable at all stages in the value chain. Replacing fossil fuels, developing affordable renewables, or cutting emissions in existing processes are all important pieces of this puzzle.
This year’s winner of the Innovation Award is developing technologies with a global reach, but with the North Sea as first move market. They are collaborating closely with partners on several initiatives, by developing new technology, but also through initiatives that are vital to make the technology fly and feasible for up scaling and broad use.
The maritime sector is truly a valued, trusted, and integrated part of the energy industry world-wide. With several ground-breaking initiatives this year’s winner is pushing ahead in reducing the emissions from this sector. By 2050, to reach IMO emission targets, 80 per cent of the world’s merchant fleet at sea will have to be CO2 emission free.
The goal of this year’s winners project is to demonstrate how green fuel can be used in internal combustion engines for power production in today’s ships and different offshore installations.
We, the Innovation Award Jury, find the project by Wärtsilä to de-carbonize shipping by ammonia a worthy winner of this year’s ONS Innovation Award.”
Jury assessment:
“The main objective of the ONS SME (small, medium enterprises) Innovation Awards is to promote efforts to disrupt, improve or replace current solutions that will make the energy industry more competitive and sustainable at all stages in the value chain. With this award we want to honour the SME segment in our industry especially. As an energy industry, we need more transfer of competence, ideas, and collaboration with partners across the energy landscape if we are to meet our net zero targets.
This year’s winner of the SME award has a long history of entrepreneurship and innovation where competence from different fields go hand in hand. The green energy revolution is certainly about inventing new ways of producing more and cleaner energy. But it is also about using materials, resources, and precious energy wisely and by that avoiding both wasted value and securing income in new ways. Heating and cooling of buildings and industry accounts for half of EU’s energy consumption according to the European Commission. Industrial processes in Europe are currently responsible for almost 26% of primary energy consumption and are characterized by a multitude of energy losses, therefore waste heat recovery is essential. The energy squeeze in Europe now accentuates this more than ever.
The Innovation Award Jury, find Ruden’s HEAT technology, a worthy winner of this year’s ONS SME Innovation Award.”
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Ruden and Wärtsilä and thank you to everyone nominating their projects for this years awards. The competition gets tougher each year and we can’t wait to see what 2024 will bring!