On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability

Jun Jie Wu; Varun Vijayamohan; Robert W. Field

doi:10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x

On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability

Jun Jie Wu
, Varun Vijayamohan
, Robert W. Field^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aston University

Northumbria University, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Newcastle, NE1 8ST, UK, ROR: https://ror.org/049e6bc10, GRID: grid.42629.3b, ISNI: 0000 0001 2196 5555
University of Oxford, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford, OX1 3PJ, UK, ROR: https://ror.org/052gg0110, GRID: grid.4991.5, ISNI: 0000 0004 1936 8948

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

3 Citations (SciVal)

6 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

To achieve the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goals a major switch to clean sustainable energy is required. Both solar and wind energy are already making major contributions. Great interest is being shown in other processes including a suite of renewable technology that can has been labelled “Blue Energy” otherwise known as ocean energy or marine energy technologies. This suite of technologies comprises three principal categories relating to tides, to waves and to salinity gradients that can be created between seawater and fresh water. In each of these three categories there are various technologies for the extraction of the energy, and the various processes will be briefly described. Then the three are examined in order to assess which if any, from mainly a European perspective, have good growth prospects. Especially with respect to near-horizon implementation, tidal energy, especially tidal stream devises, are considered the most promising. Notwithstanding this observation, the brief review also concludes that no Marine Energy technology has the capacity to become as ubiquitous as solar and wind and in many cases the journeys from innovation to implementation have been or could be permanently stalled.

Original language	English
Article number	741
Number of pages	19
Journal	Discover Sustainability
Volume	6
Early online date	1 Aug 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x
Publication status	Published - 1 Aug 2025

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy
SDG 13 Climate Action
SDG 14 Life Below Water

Keywords

Ocean energy
Blue energy
Salinity gradient power
Wave energy
Tidal energy

Access to Document

10.1007/s43621-025-01676-xLicence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability
Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Final published version, 1.89 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Cite this

@article{712446f8242c45f884d345bd97caaaa9,

title = "On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability",

abstract = "To achieve the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goals a major switch to clean sustainable energy is required. Both solar and wind energy are already making major contributions. Great interest is being shown in other processes including a suite of renewable technology that can has been labelled “Blue Energy” otherwise known as ocean energy or marine energy technologies. This suite of technologies comprises three principal categories relating to tides, to waves and to salinity gradients that can be created between seawater and fresh water. In each of these three categories there are various technologies for the extraction of the energy, and the various processes will be briefly described. Then the three are examined in order to assess which if any, from mainly a European perspective, have good growth prospects. Especially with respect to near-horizon implementation, tidal energy, especially tidal stream devises, are considered the most promising. Notwithstanding this observation, the brief review also concludes that no Marine Energy technology has the capacity to become as ubiquitous as solar and wind and in many cases the journeys from innovation to implementation have been or could be permanently stalled.",

keywords = "Ocean energy, Blue energy, Salinity gradient power, Wave energy, Tidal energy",

author = "Wu, \{Jun Jie\} and Varun Vijayamohan and Field, \{Robert W.\}",

note = "Copyright {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.",

year = "2025",

month = aug,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x",

language = "English",

volume = "6",

journal = "Discover Sustainability",

issn = "2662-9984",

publisher = "Springer",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability

AU - Wu, Jun Jie

AU - Vijayamohan, Varun

AU - Field, Robert W.

N1 - Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

PY - 2025/8/1

Y1 - 2025/8/1

N2 - To achieve the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goals a major switch to clean sustainable energy is required. Both solar and wind energy are already making major contributions. Great interest is being shown in other processes including a suite of renewable technology that can has been labelled “Blue Energy” otherwise known as ocean energy or marine energy technologies. This suite of technologies comprises three principal categories relating to tides, to waves and to salinity gradients that can be created between seawater and fresh water. In each of these three categories there are various technologies for the extraction of the energy, and the various processes will be briefly described. Then the three are examined in order to assess which if any, from mainly a European perspective, have good growth prospects. Especially with respect to near-horizon implementation, tidal energy, especially tidal stream devises, are considered the most promising. Notwithstanding this observation, the brief review also concludes that no Marine Energy technology has the capacity to become as ubiquitous as solar and wind and in many cases the journeys from innovation to implementation have been or could be permanently stalled.

AB - To achieve the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goals a major switch to clean sustainable energy is required. Both solar and wind energy are already making major contributions. Great interest is being shown in other processes including a suite of renewable technology that can has been labelled “Blue Energy” otherwise known as ocean energy or marine energy technologies. This suite of technologies comprises three principal categories relating to tides, to waves and to salinity gradients that can be created between seawater and fresh water. In each of these three categories there are various technologies for the extraction of the energy, and the various processes will be briefly described. Then the three are examined in order to assess which if any, from mainly a European perspective, have good growth prospects. Especially with respect to near-horizon implementation, tidal energy, especially tidal stream devises, are considered the most promising. Notwithstanding this observation, the brief review also concludes that no Marine Energy technology has the capacity to become as ubiquitous as solar and wind and in many cases the journeys from innovation to implementation have been or could be permanently stalled.

KW - Ocean energy

KW - Blue energy

KW - Salinity gradient power

KW - Wave energy

KW - Tidal energy

UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105012313727

U2 - 10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x

DO - 10.1007/s43621-025-01676-x

M3 - Review article

SN - 2662-9984

VL - 6

JO - Discover Sustainability

JF - Discover Sustainability

M1 - 741

ER -

On the potential of ocean energy technologies to contribute to future sustainability

Abstract

Bibliographical note

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this