Ocean energy

Ocean energy

The oceans have a tremendous amount of energy and are close to many if not most concentrated populations. Many researches show that ocean energy has the potentiality of providing for a substantial amount of new renewable energy around the world. [Carbon Trust, "Future Marine Energy. Results of the Marine Energy Challenge: Cost competitiveness and growth of wave and tidal stream energy", January 2006]

Renewable ocean energy

The oceans remain a vast untapped source of renewable energy in the form of fluid flow (currents, waves, and tides) and thermal and salinity gradients. Several means of extracting energy from the ocean have been tried. Some are currently in deployment stage.

*Marine current power
*Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC)
*Salinity gradient power
*Tidal power
*Wave power

Sometimes Wind power (offshore) is also included in the list of renewable ocean energies

Theoretical potential of renewable ocean energy

The theoretical global ocean energy resource is estimated [ International Energy Agency, Implementing Agreement on Ocean Energy Systems (IEA-OES), Annual Report 2007 ] to be on the order of:

* 2.000 TWh/year for osmotic energy
* 10.000 TWh/year for ocean thermal energy (OTEC)
* 800 TWh/year for tidal current energy
* 8.000 – 80.000 TWh/year for wave energy

This theoretical potential is several times greater than the actual global electricity demand, and equivalent to 4000 – 18000 MToE MToE (million tons of oil equivalent).

Non-renewable ocean energy

Petroleum and natural gas beneath the ocean floor are increasingly important sources of energy. An ocean engineer directs all phases of discovering, extracting, and delivering offshore petroleum (via oil tankers and pipelines), a complex and demanding task. Also centrally important is the development of new methods to protect marine wildlife and coastal regions against the undesirable side effects of offshore oil extraction.

References

ee also

* Energy harvesting
* International Electrotechnical Commission
* Ocean Engineering
* Renewable energy commercialization
* European Ocean Energy Association

External links


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