Ocean energy is a term used to describe renewable energy derived from the sea, including ocean wave energy, tidal and open-ocean current energy (sometimes called marine hydrokinetic energy), tidal barrages, offshore wind energy, and ocean thermal and salinity gradient energy. Shallow water offshore wind is a commercial technology (over 1,500 MW capacity installed in Europe). The technologies to convert the other ocean energy resources to electricity, including deepwater offshore wind technology, albeit in their infancies, exist. These technologies are ready for full-scale prototype and early commercialization testing at sea. This paper highlights the technology development status of various energy conversion technologies.

Bedard, R., P.T. Jacobson, M. Previsic, W. Musial, and R. Varley. 2010. An overview of ocean renewable energy technologies. Oceanography 23(2):22–31, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2010.40.

Beaudoin, G., D. Robertson, R. Doherty, D. Corren, B. Staby, and L. Meyer. 2010. Technological challenges to commercial-scale application of marine renewables. Oceanography 23(2):32-41.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.