There are a number of challenges associated with the fact that the marine energy industry is in the nascent stages of development. Technologies are largely in the research, development, and demonstration phases, and they have not yet been validated as commercially ready. Additional challenges include a lack of awareness of different market opportunities and benefits of marine energy technologies; limited familiarity with the technologies themselves; industry perceptions of high technical risk; and limited experience in manufacturing devices and designing systems that can be efficiently manufactured at scale.
Through its Data Access and Analytics Activity Area, WPTO aims to address these challenges through the following approaches:
- Provide original research to assess and communicate potential marine and hydrokinetic market opportunities, including those relevant for other maritime markets
- Aggregate and analyze data on marine and hydrokinetic performance and technology advances and maintain information sharing platforms to enable dissemination
- Leverage expertise, technology, data, methods, and lessons learned from the international marine and hydrokinetic community and other offshore scientific and industrial sectors.
WPTO's Marine Energy e-newsletter shares news and updates on tools, analysis, and emerging technologies to advance marine energy.