The UK is leading the development and installation of offshore renewable energy technologies. With over 13GW of installed offshore wind capacity and another 3GW under construction, two operational and one awarded floating offshore demonstration projects as well as Contracts for Difference awards for four tidal energy projects, offshore renewable energy will provide the backbone of the Net Zero energy system, giving energy security, green growth and jobs in the UK. The revised UK targets that underpin the Energy Security Strategy seek to grow offshore wind capacity to 50 GW, with up to 5 GW floating offshore wind by 2030. Further acceleration is envisaged beyond 2030 with targets of around 150 GW anticipated for 2050. To achieve these levels of deployment, ORE developments need to move beyond current sites to more challenging locations in deeper water, further from shore, while the increasing pace of deployment introduces major challenges in consenting, manufacture and installation. These are ambitious targets that will require strategic innovation and research to achieve the necessary technology acceleration while ensuring environmental sustainability and societal acceptance. The role of the Supergen ORE Hub 2023 builds on the academic and scientific networks, traction with industry and policymakers and the reputation for research leadership established in the Supergen ORE Hub 2018. The new hub will utilise existing and planned research outcomes to accelerate the technology development, collaboration and industry uptake for commercial ORE developments. The Supergen ORE Hub strategy will focus on delivering impact and knowledge transfer, underpinned by excellent research, for the benefit of the wider sector, providing research and development for the economic and social benefit of the UK. Four mechanisms for leverage are envisaged to accelerate the ORE expansion: Streamlining ORE projects, by accelerating planning, consenting and build out timescales; upscaling the ORE workforce, increasing the scale and efficiency of ORE devices and system; enhanced competitiveness, maximising ORE local content and ORE economic viability in the energy portfolio; whilst ensuring sustainability, yielding positive environmental and social benefits from ORE. The research programme is built around five strategic workstreams, i) ORE expansion - policy and scenarios , ii) Data for ORE design and decision-making, iii) ORE modelling, iv) ORE design methods and v) Future ORE systems and concepts, which will be delivered through a combination of core research to tackle sector wide challenges in a holistic and synergistic manner, strategic projects to address emerging sector challenges and flexible funding to deliver targeted projects addressing focussed opportunities. Supergen Representative Systems will be established as a vehicle for academic and industry community engagement to provide comparative reference cases for assessing applicability of modelling tools and approaches, emerging technology and data processing techniques. The Supergen ORE Hub outputs, research findings and sector progress will be communicated through directed networking, engagement and dissemination activities for the range of academic, industry and policy and governmental stakeholders, as well as the wider public. Industry leverage will be achieved through new co-funding mechanisms, including industry-funded flexible funding calls, direct investment into research activities and the industry-funded secondment of researchers, with >53% industry plus >23% HEI leverage on the EPSRC investment at proposal stage. The Hub will continue and expand its role in developing and sustaining the pipeline of talent flowing into research and industry by integrating its ECR programme with Early Career Industrialists and by enhancing its programme of EDI activities to help deliver greater diversity within the sector and to promote ORE as a rewarding and accessible career for all.

This work assesses the feasibility of using energy storage to make a step-change improvement in control for off-grid and on-grid wave energy arrays. This has been brought about by a need for arrays of smaller wave energy devices to utilise the less-energetic wave resource off the coast of China. For a lower energy resource, control of arrays is even more important in order to optimise performance and to improve survivability. As the focus is on future deployment of arrays in China, the step-change is only possible with the expertise in wave climate, off-grid connection of devices and power systems in China; hence this contribution is provided by project partners in China.

Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is an important and highly abundant organo-sulfur compound. It is synthesised by many algae, bacteria and some higher plants, where it is thought to be involved in chemotaxis, grazer deterrence, osmoprotection, cryoprotection, hydrostatic pressure protection and/or resistance to oxidative stress. DMSP, and its gaseous breakdown products, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and methanethiol (MeSH) are the major biosources of sulfur transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere. Atmospheric DMS and MeSH are climate active gases (CAGs) that form aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei, which reduce the global radiation budget and 'cool' the local climate. It was previously thought that only Trichodesmium species of cyanobacteria and low proportions of marine bacteria produce DMSP at significant levels. However, our pilot work shows that many cyanobacteria, e.g. highly abundant marine Synechococcus and saltmarsh species, produce DMSP, as well as other important and abundant bacterial phyla (e.g. gammaproteobacteria). These microbes contain a gene that we term dsyC, which we show encodes the key S-methyltransferase enzyme that catalyses the committed and rate limiting step of DMSP synthesis. This work is important because dsyC genes occur in up to 5% of marine bacteria and are highly transcribed in Earth's photic waters and surface sediment, established from our analysis of the Tara Oceans and local datasets. In comparison, the other DMSP synthesis genes that we and others discovered (dsyB, DSYB, mmtN and TpMMT), encoding the key S-methyltransferase of alternate bacterial and algal DMSP biosynthesis pathways, are collectively far less abundant and transcribed than dsyC. Therefore, cyanobacteria and other diverse bacteria (cyano/bacteria) with DsyC could be very significant contributors to global production of DMSP, and, thus, of CAGs derived from it. This would be a paradigm-shifting finding, showing that cyano/bacteria, pretty much ignored as significant DMSP producers, are large-scale contributors to global production. However, without the multidisciplinary work planned here we are unable to make such statements. The first major goal will be to establish the environmental conditions under which DMSP is produced in cyano/bacteria that have DsyC homologues. We will then generate dsyC knockouts in marine Synechococcus species and a selection of other bacteria with dsyC. Growth of wild-type and mutant strains will then be compared under a range of environmental or stress conditions to assess the role of DMSP in these bacteria and importantly the major environmental drivers of DsyC-dependent DMSP synthesis. In conjunction, we will determine the amount of DMSP per cell and synthesis rates in wild-type and mutant samples. The next goal will be to determine the key features of the DsyC enzyme. To address this, we will examine the enzymatic activity and substrate affinity of DsyC from a range of cyano/bacteria to identify the key amino acid residues that could determine whether they are of a high activity or low activity type. Finally, via analysis of cyano/bacterial samples from a broad range of oligotrophic and coastal waters, and a seasonal study of saltmarsh cyanobacterial mats, we will quantify DMSP and CAG levels and synthesis rates and compare these to laboratory cultured model organisms. This will allow us to estimate annual, global production rates of DMSP by marine Synechococcus and potentially Prochlorococcus species, localised production by all species in Western Pacific and Eastern Indian oceans, and localised saltmarshes and potential production of DMS and therefore the environmental impact of cyanobacterial DMSP production.

Globally, a billion tons of the sulfur-containing molecule dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is made each year. The common belief was that DMSP is only made by marine eukaryotes, including phytoplankton, seaweeds, a few plants and some corals, but our preliminary work shows that marine bacteria also make DMSP, and at levels similar to those reported for some phytoplankton. For the first time, we have shown that marine bacteria likely use DMSP as an osmoprotectant to buffer cells against the salinity of seawater. The research that we propose will redefine the field of DMSP production and its catabolism. DMSP is the main precursor of the environmentally important gas dimethylsulfide (DMS). Microbial DMSP lysis generates ~300 million tons of DMS per annum. Much of this DMS is used by bacteria, but ~10 % is released from the seas into the air, giving the seaside its characteristic smell. Once in the atmosphere, chemical products arising from DMS oxidation aid cloud formation over the oceans, to an extent that affects sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, with effects on climate. In turn, these products are delivered back to Earth as rain, representing a key component of the global sulfur cycle. DMS is also a potent chemoattractant for many organisms including seabirds, crustaceans and marine mammals, which associate DMS with food. Although previous studies have described the pathways for DMSP synthesis, remarkably NONE of the enzymes or corresponding genes have been identified in ANY DMSP-producing organism. Our preliminary data: 1. show that some marine bacteria make DMSP via the same pathway used by phytoplankton. 2. identified the key gene in bacterial DMSP production "mmtB" - the first gene shown to be involved in DMSP synthesis in any organism. 3. show that our model marine bacterium Labrenzia likely makes DMSP as an osmoprotectant. 4. show that bacteria containing mmtB produce DMSP, and some also contain DMSP lyase genes whose products liberate DMS from DMSP. 5. show that the mmtB gene is abundant in marine environments. Our project: The mmtB gene encodes an enzyme that catalyses one of the four predicted steps in DMSP synthesis, but we do not know the identity the other three genes. To fully understand the process of DMSP synthesis in bacteria, we need to identify the missing synthesis genes so that we can study their regulation and enzymology. We will use complementary molecular genetic approaches to identify the unknown DMSP synthesis genes and, in the process, characterise the full complement of genes whose expression is affected by salinity in Labrenzia. To understand how and why bacteria in the environment produce DMSP and DMS, we will study key model bacteria isolated from marine samples. These bacteria will be grown in microcosms under conditions similar to those of their natural habitat, and their environmental growth conditions will be varied whilst monitoring DMS and DMSP synthesis, at both the process and gene expression level. This will indicate whether environmental factors such as temperature, oxidative stress, etc., affect the production of DMSP and concomitantly the production of the climate-active gas DMS. The importance of bacterial DMSP production in marine environments will be examined. We will sample selected marine environments and investigate the activity of bacterial DMSP synthesis compared to eukaryotic DMS/DMSP pathways. We will determine if the environmental factors that regulate DMS/DMSP production in our model bacteria have the same effect on natural microbial communities that are present in important marine environments. We will also use a powerful suite of microbial ecology techniques, combined with molecular genetic tools, to identify the microbes and key genes involved in producing DMSP via the MmtB enzyme in these environments. This work will help us in the future to model how changes in the environment impact on the balance of these climate processes.

Marine-dwelling microbes and plants produce 8 billion tonnes of dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) per year in Earth's surface oceans alone, via enzymes we have identified. Organisms produce DMSP to protect against salinity, cold, turgor pressure, oxidative and drought stresses, and predation. DMSP released into the environment is also widely taken up by microbes for these anti-stress properties, and used as a key nutrient via distinct degradation pathways. DMSP has critically important roles in global sulfur and carbon cycling, signalling, and as a major source of climate-active gases (CAG) e.g. dimethylsulfide (DMS) and the foul-smelling gas methanethiol (MeSH). Each year millions of tonnes of DMS, the characteristic smell of the seaside and a potent foraging cue guiding diverse organisms (gulls, seals, zooplankton, etc) to food, is released from DMSP via microbial DMSP lyase enzymes that we also identified. Some DMS is released and oxidised to form aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei in the atmosphere, which reduce the global radiation budget and 'cool' local climate. Critically, these sulfate aerosols return to land in rain - the primary transfer of biogenic sulfur from the oceans to land. DMSP synthesis and degradation are thought to occur only in marine settings, so DMSP cycling in terrestrial environments has largely been unexplored. We challenged this dogma by revealing that DMSP synthesis is widespread in the plant Kingdom, ranging from common plants like grass, to agriculturally-important crops like maize, cabbage and sugarcane. Furthermore, our preliminary work shows that DMSP levels surpassing those in seawater exist in soils in which these key agricultural and bioenergy crops grow. Our work shows such soils liberate significant quantities of DMS and MeSH - processes ignored in climate models. We have also isolated novel bacteria and fungi from maize and sugarcane soils that utilise DMSP as a carbon source and show inducible DMSP-dependent DMS or MeSH production. Critically, these bacteria lack known DMSP degradation genes in their genomes, and thus likely possess novel DMSP catabolic enzymes and/or pathways. We have therefore uncovered a potentially large and virtually unexplored research area with profound implications for biogeochemical cycling. Our findings urgently require detailed study to establish the importance and influence of terrestrial DMSP cycling on the climate. We wish to answer the fundamentally important questions of how microbes associated to terrestrial plants degrade DMSP, and the ecological and global importance of the process, especially relating to CAG production. We will test the hypothesis that plant-made DMSP is a key nutrient for CAG-producing microbes. In an everyday context, are microbes degrading DMSP responsible for the rotten MeSH smell associated with cabbage fields, or the sweet DMS smell associated with sweetcorn? We will study microbial DMSP degradation and concomitant CAG production associated to plants known to produce low (maize) and high (sugarcane) levels of DMSP, which together cover >0.2 billion ha. Collaborations are in place to sample these plants, as are the model DMSP-producing bacteria we isolated to study microbial DMSP degradation mechanisms in terrestrial environments. Our major aims are to elucidate the enzymes, pathways, and mechanisms of DMSP degradation in terrestrial microbes and use this knowledge to define the magnitude of the process and factors regulating it. Furthermore, we will use cutting-edge microbial ecology, modelling and process work to answer fundamental ecological questions: what are the key microbes that degrade DMSP and emit CAG in terrestrial environments, and how do they influence the climate? We see our proposal as addressing a major new challenge that will reveal the importance of DMSP in terrestrial environments, uncovering new and unexpected research fields with far-reaching implications for current and future climate models.