Interim Report of the Working Group on Marine Renewable Energy (WGMRE)

The fourth meeting of the ICES Working Group on Marine Renewable Energy (WGMRE) took place on 4–6 April 2017. It was hosted by Wavec, Lisbon, Portugal and attended by 7 participants representing 4 countries. The main focus of the meeting may be summa-rised in the following topics:• All members gave presentations providing summaries of the developments in MRE in their respective countries, including consenting processes, management tools and relevant research programs.• Discussion on the development of a paper to be published in a peer-reviewed jour-nal. The paper would be about moving towards a question-led approach for manag-ing the marine environment in order to enable sound decision making for renewables. A concept abstract for the paper was established.• Discussion of the development of an ICES viewpoint on the implementation of adap-tive management approaches in MRE, with the participation of WGMBRED, using information collected previously on country report updates.• Explore possible collaboration links between WGMRE and WGMPCZM. A connec-tion was made via Skype with the WGMPCZM meeting that was being held in Barce-lona on 6 April, to know the work that has been done by this group on methodologies for cumulative impacts assessment in the marine space.• ToRs were revised to replace the organisation of workshops by collaborations among ICES WG.