OES Annual Report 2022

New OES Report Reveals Advancements on Ocean Energy Across Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

The International Energy Agency Ocean Energy Systems (IEA-OES) has published its 2022 Annual Report. This comprehensive report provides an overview of national policies, research, and technology demonstration on ocean energy in member countries. Additionally, the report highlights the achievements and progress of IEA-OES collaborative projects.

The report has revealed that governments around the world are increasingly adopting new legislation and regulatory regimes to support offshore energy projects. Strategic approaches are being taken by governments to tackle the challenges faced by the industry. The report also identifies market incentives in some countries, such as the UK’s Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, which awarded four contracts to tidal energy projects. For the first time, these contracts were separated from other more mature technologies.

The industry is shifting from small-scale demonstrations and pilot projects to higher technology readiness levels. The accumulated operational hours of some devices demonstrate increased reliability and availability, giving confidence to scale-up the technology. Successful testing programmes have been completed, and new devices are progressing to deployment and commissioning tests.

Several test sites around the world are playing a pivotal role in the testing, validation, and certification of technologies. In addition, several initiatives are making progress in providing clean energy to remote communities that lack access to the electrical grid and rely on fossil fuels for their energy supply.

Furthermore, the report shows that several countries continued with their funding programmes fundamental for ocean energy projects in their journey for commercialisation. The ocean energy sector experienced record US budget support in 2022. The European Commission also continued to support the development of the ocean energy sector through an array of activities and programmes.

This support must be continued and reinforced in order to sale up the ocean energy sector rapidly as a response to the energy crisis.