Goodbye to 0.3 Gt/year of CO2 by exploiting only 2% of clean offshore energy
A new study has assessed the potential of offshore renewables, revealing that tidal energy and floating photovoltaics represent the most cost-effective solution
With a production potential twice as large as global electricity demand, clean offshore energy could make a valuable contribution to the planet's energy supply. However, this contribution is currently extremely limited and mostly tied to wind farms in European seas.
Why this situation? One of the obstacles to development lies precisely in the analyses carried out on the potential of individual technologies. As a new British-American study has shown, previous assessments have always been carried out on a global scale . This has made it almost impossible to identify, for a given location, the type or types of marine resources with the greatest energy potential.
To address this knowledge gap, scientists from the University of Strathclyde (UK) and the University of Maine (USA) have conducted the first global cross-resource assessment of marine renewables . Specifically, the team has collected over 600 analyses and sector studies into a single database, standardising energy potentials into a single unit of measurement (kW/m²).
They found that tidal power and photovoltaic (floating) power consistently delivered more energy than other sources such as wind and wave power, in any region of the world. Floating solar power in particular proved to be more reliable and less variable than other sources.
Despite this, offshore PV and ocean currents are rarely the focus of research. It is therefore not surprising that they appear largely untapped today.
The study suggests that by fully harnessing solar and tidal energy, we could nearly triple or quadruple the global energy potential of clean offshore energy, providing enough power for hundreds of millions of homes.
Not only that. According to the researchers, exploiting even just a small percentage of tidal energy and offshore photovoltaics could make a significant contribution to reducing CO2. “Assuming global emissions are equivalent to 2019 levels, an additional 2% of combined tidal and solar resources would eliminate 0.299 gigatonnes per year . At this rate, net neutrality would be achieved in 68 years,” writes the Scottish university.
The research is published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews .
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