The Global Wave Energy Resource

European Wave Resource Chart
The chart shows annual average wave
power in kilowatts per metre of crest
width for various European sites.

Ocean waves represent a considerable renewable energy resource. Waves are generated by the wind as it blows across the ocean surface. They travel great distances without significant losses and so act as an efficient energy transport mechanism across thousands of kilometres. Waves generated by a storm in mid-Atlantic will travel all the way to the coast of Europe without significant loss of energy.

All of the energy is concentrated near the water surface with little wave action below 50 metres depth. This makes wave power a highly concentrated energy source with much smaller hourly and day-to-day variations than other renewable resources such as wind or solar. Conveniently, the seasonal variation of wave power closely follows the trend for electricity consumption in Western Europe.

The western seaboard of Europe offers an enormous number of potential sites. The most promising sites are off the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Norway.

There is sufficient energy breaking on the UK shoreline to power the country three times over.  However, it is not practical to recover all of this energy. The economically recoverable resource for the UK alone has been estimated to be 87TWh per year, or ~25% of current UK demand.

In the past five years there has been a resurgence of activity in wave energy, as the huge resource potential has been recognised. A number of developers in different countries have either installed or are about to install full-scale prototypes with funds in excess of 70 million euros have been committed to these installations.

There are many promising sites around the world; any site on the map shown with an average wave power level of over 15kW per metre has the potential to generate wave energy at competitive prices. Many countries recognise this potential and are seriously looking at how to exploit it.

World Wave Resource Map
The map above shows annual average wave
power in kilowatts per metre of crest width
for various sites around the world.