Wave Energy Generation in Brazil: A Georeferenced Oscillating Water Column Inventory

Adriano Silva Bastos (), Tâmara Rita Costa de Souza, Dieimys Santos Ribeiro, Mirian de Lourdes Noronha Motta Melo and Carlos Barreira Martinez
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Adriano Silva Bastos: Mechanical Engineering Postgraduate Program, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Itajubá 37500-903, Brazil
Tâmara Rita Costa de Souza: Graduate Program in Mechanical Engineering, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte 31270-901, Brazil
Dieimys Santos Ribeiro: Electrical Engineering Postgraduate Program, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Itajubá 37500-903, Brazil
Mirian de Lourdes Noronha Motta Melo: Mechanical Engineering Postgraduate Program, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Itajubá 37500-903, Brazil
Carlos Barreira Martinez: Mechanical Engineering Postgraduate Program, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Itajubá 37500-903, Brazil

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-24

Abstract: Seas and oceans offer great potential as a widely available source of clean and renewable energy near high energy consumption centers. This source of energy is a valuable option in the energy transition and in energy matrix decarbonization. Wave energy and an oscillating water column (OWC) device stand out as the types of ocean energy with the most potential. An onshore OWC requires locations with rocky outcrops and steeper slopes as the device needs to be physically installed and has lower energy dissipation due to friction with the seabed. However, Brazil has approximately 7490 km of coastlines, with various shoreline geometries and geomorphologies, some of which are very suitable for OWC implementation. Some authors have estimated that the Brazilian coast has a total potential of 114 GW, distributed between wave and tidal energy, with a great possibility of contributing to global decarbonization efforts. This study aimed to identify and quantify the potential of locations suitable for implementing wave energy farms equipped with onshore OWC. For this, a prospect was carried out using the georeferencing software QGIS, resulting in a georeferenced map with a dataset of 319 locations, and determining a power capacity of exploitation of 9.84 GW and an estimated energy of 83,689 GWh/year in ten of the seventeen coastal states. This energy corresponds to twice the energy consumption of the state of Rio de Janeiro, which has a population of approximately 17.5 million people. If the same amount of wave energy as gas-fired thermal generation energy were to be consumed, the use of wave energy would reduce emissions by approximately 44.52 million tons of CO 2 annually. This result suggests that wave energy generation should be included in future studies on the expansion of Brazilian electric systems as an accelerating factor in the energy transition.

Keywords: energy resources; energy transition; ocean energy; oscillating water column; renewable energy; wave energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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