Ocean Energy
The oceans cover 75% of the world's surface and as such ocean energy represents one of the largest renewable energy sources available to contribute to the security of energy supply and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while enhancing the competitiveness of European industries when ocean energy conversion devices reach commercial stage.
Major achievements have taken place over the last few years with various ocean energy systems having been deployed at sea in several countries and these technologies are making the transition from research to demonstration to market penetration.
Though ocean energy technologies are not yet economically competitive with more mature renewable energy technologies such as wind, in the medium term these technologies will become significant contributors to those markets adjacent to the resource.
In the longer term, ocean energy could become a much more important part of the world's energy portfolio. The potential worldwide wave energy contribution to the electricity market is estimated to be of the order of 1-10 TW, which is the same order of magnitude as world electrical energy production capacity. Wave energy has the highest density among all renewable energy sources. The best resource is found between 40 - 60 degrees of latitude where the available resource is 30 to 70 kW/m with peaks up to 100 kW/m. The supply potential is estimated to be 7 TWh/y from ~200000 MW installed wave and tidal energy power by 2050 with a load factor of 0.35 (DTI and Carbon Trust estimates).
Annual average wave energy flux per unit width of wave crest (kilowatts per m)
One can distinguish 5 different types of ocean energy systems : wave energy, tidal energy, marine current energy, salinity energy, thermal energy.
To date, wave and tidal energy are the most advanced types of ocean energy systems under development. More information on the different types of ocean energy systems and their current status of development can be found by clicking on the links on the right.
