Portugal’s flagship marine renewables center appoints new chief executive

WavEC Offshore Renewables, a Portugal-based technology and innovation center dedicated to the development of marine renewable energy, has appointed Marco Alves as its new chief executive officer.

Marco Alves has a PhD and a M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from IST, an M.Sc. in management and strategy from ISEG, and more than 20 years of experience in the marine renewable energy sector.

Throughout these years, Alves developed an in-depth understanding of marine renewable energy systems, not only from the technical-scientific point of view, combining knowledge in the areas of numerical modelling, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, control, coastal engineering, and data science, but also in respect to their commercialization and market rollout.

After having taken the role of chief innovation officer for the Energy area at CoLab +Atlantic for the last two years, Alves is returning to WavEC, where he spent more than 15 years of his career, to lead the institution during the period of expected significant breakthroughs in wave energy development, and the impending rollout of floating offshore wind large-scale deployment in Portugal and in Europe.

António Sarmento, president of WavEC’s board of directors, said: “I worked with Marco Alves over many years, during which I learned to admire an exceptional technical-scientific competence combined with a great sensitivity to the business world and with a high capacity for work and dedication plus great interpersonal skills.”

By the end of the year, Marco Alves will replace António Sarmento as President of the board of directors, completing a transition period of three months.

Commenting on his new role, Marco Alves said: “I am extremely motivated to embrace this new challenge in my career and very excited to start working with the exceptionally talented team of WavEC and see what we can achieve together. I am deeply convinced that WavEC will play an important role in the challenges we face today, namely with regard to the need to accelerate the energy transition and the growth of the blue economy.”

WavEC is a technology and innovation center dedicated to the development of marine renewable energies, including wind energy and wave energy. More recently, it has been expanding the scope of its activity to new areas like offshore aquaculture, hydrogen production and storage, and ocean monitoring.

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