Scotland is to offer one of the largest scientific prizes in the world in an effort to stimulate ground breaking research into renewable technology.
The announcement in the Budget of the £10m Horizon Prize is modelled on the X Prize Foundation in the US which developed its $10m prizes in areas such as commercial space exploration, genome breakthroughs and non-petrol cars.
With the Horizon Prize to be worth double the X-series, the Scottish Government hopes to attract international entries and stimulate a breakthrough in harnessing energy from the waters around the country.
Energy Minister Jim Mather said: "The Scottish Government will award one of the biggest international innovation prizes in history. The Saltire Prize will be an annual prize fund of £2m, with a £10m Horizon Prize attracting the cream of the world's scientists to make Scotland a leading centre for renewable energy.
"The potential for Scotland to increase sustainable economic growth while bringing major advances in clean energy are massive. Scotland can challenge scientists and businesses around the world to bring the vast potential of clean, green, alternative energy online years sooner than might otherwise happen.
"This will be the largest renewable energy innovation prize in the world. "
The Saltire was originally intended to be worth £5m but with no guarantee of it being awarded every year. It will now become a £2m award granted every year, with £10m being set aside in the future to reward a tangible breakthrough, targeted at aspects of marine renewables.
One key aspect of this technology is to design equipment that can survive the hostile and corrosive environment, while another possible area for the prize could be a breakthrough in storing the energy generated.
The combined outlay on the two prizes will be £16m over three years, instead of the £15m which would have been earmarked for the Saltire Prize alone.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article