• Improve remote, coastal, and island communities’ access to resilient energy sources and clean water
• Enable the development of renewable energy-powered systems to monitor, observe, and protect the oceans
• Spark marine energy entrepreneurship and engage an emerging, diverse workforce to achieve ambitious renewable energy goals
• Serve as a complementary technology to boost the viability of other renewable energy technologies and hybrid systems
• Harness energy from the ocean to power emerging applications such as sustainable aquaculture and seawater mineral mining
• Encourage the advancement of technologies to support decarbonizing the maritime sector.

Marine energy resources, including ocean waves, tides, currents, and salinity and temperature gradients, are particularly well suited to address these power constraints in the blue economy because they are renewable, geographically co-located, and complementary to other energy sources.

During the last decade, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) has made progress in R&D focused on marine energy technology development as well as in understanding how these resources could serve grid-scale electricity needs. But to better understand the opportunities specific to marine energy’s role in the blue economy, WPTO, with support from the national laboratories, is investigating the potential opportunities for integration of marine energy into blue economy sectors.