Information Sheet

Innovation and Sustainability in the Renewable Energy Sector

Thank you for considering participating in this research project. The purpose here is to explain to you what the work is about and what your participation would involve to enable you to make an informed choice.

The objective of this study is to obtain a better understanding of the innovation activities, knowledge sourcing activities, networks, resources, and performance of firms within the offshore renewable energy sector and its potential supply chain. Should you choose to participate, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire, which will include items on innovation activities, knowledge sourcing activities, networks, resources, policy mix, and performance.

The information you provide may contribute to several academic contributions: research dissertations, industry and policy reports, conference presentations, and peer-reviewed paper publications.

This research is part of the wider Selkie project and has received funding from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme (the Selkie project for more details see here: https://www.selkie-project.eu/ ).

Participation in this study is completely voluntary. There is no obligation to participate, and should you choose to do so you can refuse to answer specific questions or decide to withdraw from the study. All information you provide will be confidential and your anonymity will be protected throughout the study. IP addresses will not be collected at any point. Data collection will be completed electronically using Google Forms.

You maintain the right to withdraw from the study at any stage up to the point of data submission. At this point, your data will be collated with that of other participants and can no longer be retracted.

The anonymous data will be stored on the University College Cork OneDrive system and subsequently on the UCC server. The data will be stored for a minimum of ten years. The full dataset (i.e. non-anonymized) will only be made available to members of the research team Dr. Frank Crowley, Professor Justin Doran, Dr. Aon Waqas, and Dr. Gordon Dalton and Masters by Research Students working on this project. In addition, access to the anonymous form of the data may be provided to other Ph.D., research assistants or Masters by Research students who may use the data to produce papers and reports. A limited and anonymized dataset (that EXCLUDES potentially identifiable information and commercially sensitive information) may be released publicly in 2022. We do not anticipate any negative outcomes from participating in this study and we do not intend to cause any distress to participants. However, you can choose not to answer questions, or to withdraw from the survey. Should you experience distress arising from participating in the research please contact the research team. These contact details are provided below.

This study has obtained ethical approval from the UCC Social Research Ethics Committee.

If you have any queries about this research, you can contact me at aon.waqas@ucc.ie or other team members at frank.crowley@ucc.ie Justin.doran@ucc.ie