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Chapter 1
Introduction
Context, technology and governance
Glen Wright, Sandy Kerr and Kate Johnson
Most things become exhausted with promiscuous use.
This is not the case with the sea.
—Grotius (1608)
1 The industrial revolution of the oceans
At the time Hugo Grotius was formulating the Freedom of the Seas principle in 1608, the sea, vast and teeming with life, would have indeed seemed inexhaustible. Yet 400 years later, our seas are looking increasingly exhausted, and there is a growing awareness of the fragility of our blue planet. Our ever growing population and appetite for resources have driven huge increases in traditional maritime activities like fishing and shipping, while a new industrial revolution of the oceans is driving unprecedented exploitation of the marine environment, placing further pressure on ocean ecosystems and changing the way we think about marine governance.
The seas and coasts have long been strong drivers of economies worldwide, and coastal communities and ports have traditionally been hubs for ideas and innovation due to their outward-looking geography.1 However, the potential for industrial activity and innovation in the marine environment has grown exponentially in recent decades due to three main factors. Firstly, rapid technological progress has opened up new possibilities for the exploration and exploitation of marine areas. Secondly, land and freshwater resources are finite and are being rapidly depleted. Thirdly, the need to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions has increased interest in sustainable development of the marine environment.
While the industrial revolution on land precipitated the climate change era, the industrial revolution in the oceans has the potential to be part of the solution, if managed appropriately. Well managed aquaculture could provide a much needed source of food to coastal communities while preserving natural ecosystems,2 carbon capture and storage could remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it offshore,3 sustainable tourism can lead to improved resource management,4 and ocean energy technologies could use the movement of the waves and tides to generate low carbon electricity.
2 Climate change and renewable energy
There is now a widely accepted scientific and political consensus that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are responsible for increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and causing global warming. At the Paris climate conference in 2016, world leaders negotiated an ambitious agreement to strengthen the global response to climate change, including by:
Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
The majority of energy used worldwide comes from non-renewable sources, and meeting the Paris Agreement will require the rapid decarbonisation of our energy system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reaffirmed the role of renewable energy in confronting these challenges, stating that renewables have a “large potential to mitigate climate change” and can “contribute to social and economic development, energy access, energy security, and reduce negative impacts on the environment and health”.5
The development of renewable energy technologies and their integration into the energy mix will reduce emissions, conserve finite resources and increase energy security, in addition to bringing additional co-benefits, such as job creation. As a result, investment in renewable energy has grown dramatically in the last decade.6
3 Ocean energy technologies
The imperative to decarbonise the energy system initially drove the development of solar and onshore wind power, but interest has now spread offshore.7 The marine environment contains a number of potential sources of renewable energy, including wave and tidal energy (in this book, collectively termed ‘ocean energy’), ocean thermal energy,8 salinity gradient or osmotic energy9 and offshore wind energy. Offshore wind in particular has seen rapid growth in recent years,10 while wave and tidal technologies are now also beginning to attract considerable interest and investment.11
The oscillatory or circular motions of waves produced near the sea’s surface can be converted into electricity,12 while tidal or marine hydrokinetic energy comprises ocean currents or tides that can be directly extracted and converted into electricity.
There are a seemingly infinite number of ways that ocean energy technologies can harness the wave and tidal power of the oceans. The following quote from Stephen Salter, inventor of the Salter’s (Edinburgh) duck device for extracting wave energy, is indicative:13
Waves [are] only one of many possible sources and there are many possible ways in which waves can be harnessed. There are floats, flaps, ramps, funnels, cylinders, air-bags and liquid pistons. Devices can be at the surface, the sea bed or anywhere between. They can face backwards, forwards, sideways or obliquely and move in heave, surge, sway, pitch and roll. They can use oil, air, water, steam, gearing or electro-magnets for generation. They make a range of different demands on attachments to the sea bed and connections of power cables.
Ocean energy technologies were first explored in a number of countries as a result of the 1970s oil crisis. During this time, the UK’s Department of Energy ran a wave energy programme aimed at upscaling prospective devices, while the United States focused on OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion). However, this initial enthusiasm diminished in the face of high costs and the easing of the oil crisis, and subsequent support for ocean energy was sporadic. By the late 1980s, research activity had greatly diminished, and R&D funding was insignificant through much of the 1990s.14
Climate change and energy concerns have brought a ‘second wave’ of interest to ocean energy, particularly in the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, France, Australia, South Korea, Canada, and the United States. Large-scale utilities, energy agencies and industrial companies are making significant investments in the sector,15 and the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), a test bed for emerging ocean energy technologies, is fully subscribed with 14 full-scale devices generating to the grid. Similar testing centres are under development elsewhere. The military has also shown interest in supporting the development of ocean energy technologies, with a US naval base in Hawaii developing a wave energy generation project16 and a naval base in Western Australia signing an agreement to meet its power needs through ocean energy.17
In August 2016, the first array of tidal turbines sent energy to the grid in the Shetland Islands,18 while in September the Orkney Islands saw the launch of the first of four 1.5-MW tidal turbines, the first phase of a project eventually intended to reach an installed capacity of 398 MW.19
Devices are advancing rapidly, costs are coming down, and commercialisation appears to be on the horizon: “The technologies have been optimized, extensively tested and pilot wave energy projects have been realized. The knowledge and experiences gained lead to a development status that is ready for the market”.20
While recent developments in ocean energy are encouraging, a word of caution is advisable. Despite successful prototype deployments and the arrival of the first arrays and large-scale projects, ocean energy remains the least developed of the renewable energy technologies. Overall, ocean energy is perhaps at the same level of development as wind technology in the 1970s and early 1980s, when a range of wind turbine concepts were being researched and developed but uncertainty remained as to which concepts would become cost-competitive. Like many new industries, ocean energy proponents have often been overly ambitious or optimistic in their assessments of the future of ocean energy, and they risk overselling the potential or pace of the industry. At the same time, a wave of recent bankruptcies and technology failures, though perhaps inevitable, have shaken the industry and cast doubt on its ability to deliver.
A similar history plagued OTEC. There was a surge of interest in in the 1970s, but the predictions did not come to fruition as interest waned. In 1980, it was thought that research in key countries had advanced the technology to a stage where commercial OTEC devices could be deployed before the end of the decade and that, by the turn of the century, OTEC would be a commercial source of energy. Hearings before the House Subcommittee on Oceanography in the United States in 1978 estimated that OTEC generation would produce 3% of US energy requirements by 2000.21 In spite of considerable R&D efforts into the technology and the efforts of academics and legislators to improve the regulatory regime, OTEC did not ultimately live up to these expectations. While OTEC’s demise was largely due to the easing of the oil crisis, in contrast to the more intractable climate and energy issues now faced by policymakers, this nonetheless cautions against making unduly optimistic assessments of the potential of ocean energy technologies.
4 Marine governance
Ocean energy devices enter into a complex legal and policy environment, as our approaches to marine governance are evolving rapidly along with our increased use of the ocean. Within their own waters, states have traditionally managed marine activities on a single-sector basis. This was somewhat functional where uses of the oceans were limited and conflicts were few. However, this paradigm has severe limitations when marine activities increase, conflicts between users become more common, and the environment is...
