Abstract
Chapter 7 addresses the efforts and the need for education and outreach to a variety of audiences, to ensure that the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of developing MRE are well disseminated among the wide range of stakeholders who make up the MRE community and beyond. The process of developing and disseminating education and outreach materials entails tailoring the appropriate messages for a variety of audiences. In order to engage and educate these groups, OES-Environmental has developed coloring pages for young children, more complex and hands-on materials for school-age children, academic content for high school and university students, and straightforward but sophisticated messaging for the public. Vehicles such as fact sheets (available in print and online), podcasts, videos depicting potential environmental effects of MRE devices, presentations at conferences, social media posts, and one-on-one interactions with the range of students, researchers, MRE developers, regulators and advisors, and local communities, help to spread the word about the value of MRE. As this chapter describes, a more aware public is more likely to support and advocate for a renewable energy technology they understand, such as MRE.
A series of examples of MRE-focused outreach and education programs are presented as good practices, and examples of MRE-focused education programs from many OES-Environmental countries are described.
View the updated list of Educational and Workforce Training Resources here.
The 2024 State of the Science Report consists of 11 chapters which can be downloaded as a whole or individually. Download Chapter 7: Education and Outreach Around Environmental Effects of Marine Renewable Energy here.