Upscaling scenarios for ocean thermal energy conversion with technological learning in Indonesia and their global relevance

Jannis Langer, Jaco Quist and Kornelis Blok

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022, vol. 158, issue C

Abstract: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a promising renewable energy technology that is the most economical at large scale. But contemporary literature does not address how OTEC could reach such scale with current technology, and what the techno-economic impact of location-dependent factors and technological learning are. This paper tackles these issues by simulating OTEC's upscaling with a model that implements OTEC to meet local electricity demand and extrapolates to the global relevance of OTEC. The model uses a learning rate for investment costs and cost of finance. This study shows that up to 45 GW of OTEC capacity can be installed in Indonesia with national demand coverage of 22% in 2050. Even with small cost reduction rates, OTEC could be profitable and cost-competitive against other power generation technologies with an aggregated Net Present Value (NPV) of up to US$ 23 billion. OTEC's upscaling could be funded via state budget reallocation or international financial institutions, e.g. via the feed-in tariff suggested in the paper. However, large-scale OTEC is only feasible in regions with high electricity demand and until that size is reached, upscaling must be coordinated globally, e.g. with the proposed upscaling strategy. To contribute to the global energy transition, OTEC needs to grow by 28% per year, a rate similar to wind power and solar PV. This paper provides good reasons to fight for the attention of global decision makers and future research could focus on refining the concepts of this study.

Keywords: OTEC; Upscaling; Technological learning; LCOE; Scenarios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122000168
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:158:y:2022:i:c:s1364032122000168

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112086

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().