Examining the Potential of Marine Renewable Energy: A Net Energy Perspective

Roger Samsó (), Júlia Crespin, Antonio García-Olivares and Jordi Solé ()
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Roger Samsó: Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
Júlia Crespin: GRC Geociències Marines, Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l’Oceà, Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Antonio García-Olivares: Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM), Physical and Technological Oceanography Department, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), 08003 Barcelona, Spain
Jordi Solé: GRC Geociències Marines, Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l’Oceà, Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-35

Abstract: It is often claimed that marine renewable energy alone could meet the electricity demand of current and future human societies. However, such claims are based on highly uncertain estimations of the global potentials of marine renewable energy sources (including tidal, ocean currents, wave, offshore wind and salinity and thermal gradients), and do not take into account the embedded energy of current technologies. To better understand the effective potential of marine energy, we conducted a literature review of its gross, technical, economic and sustainable potentials, as well as the energy return on investment (EROI), and estimated the net energy potential. We found that all marine technologies could provide a maximum energy surplus of 57,000 TWh / yr . This figure goes down to ∼ 5000 TWh / yr when excluding offshore wind. The previous figures do not include the contribution from ocean currents, for which no reliable estimates of global potentials and EROIs could be obtained. Due to its high upfront costs and environmental impacts and low social acceptance, no additional tidal range capacity expansion is envisioned. Similarly, the combination of a low sustainable potential and the low EROI makes the large-scale exploitation of salinity gradients unlikely with current technologies. Including all technologies, the average EROI of marine energy is ∼ 20 , but excluding offshore wind reduces the average EROI to ∼ 8 . While we did consider sustainability constraints for some marine energy sources, our estimation of marine net energy potential primarily relied on technical factors and did not account for economic and legal constraints. Therefore, the results presented here should be interpreted as an upper bound for the actual net energy contribution of marine energy sources to the global energy mix.

Keywords: EROI; oceanic energy; offshore wind; ocean currents; OTEC; tidal; SGE; wave (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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