Introduction
The main deliverables from this Coordinated Action are the reports from the Five Workshops to be held :-
1 Modelling Ocean Energy System
2 Component Technology and Power Take-off
3 System Design, Construction, Reliability and Safety
4 Performance Monitoring of Ocean Energy Systems
5 Environmental, Economics, Development Policy and Promotional Opportunities
The main work package at Southampton involved section 5 and socio-economic benefits of wave energy.
Realizing wider socio-econmic benefit
Creating direct and indirect jobs is an important benefit from the development of ocean energies. Based on the latest information on job equivalents from offshore wave, tidal and wind and indicators of ocean energy development socio-economic benefits will be analyzed.
Economic Assessment
In order to perform an economic assessment and predict future costs of farms, an estimate of the growth rate is required. The Fig. 1 shows the current exponential growth in European offshore wind and the predicted growth over the coming decades. This leads to the following question.
Is this sort of growth possible for tidal or wave energy and if so how long will it last?
Only the future will tell, but in order to perform economic assessments it must be assumed that there is an analogy between the past growth of offshore wind and the future growth of closely related marine renewable energy technologies.
European offshore wind energy growth.