What ocean energy can learn
The development of offshore wind offers an interesting parallel to the ocean energy sector. Although the two sectors differ in technological maturity, deployment scale and market conditions, the offshore wind journey demonstrates how an emerging marine renewable technology can move from experimentation to industrial scale.
The Role of Stable Policy and Frameworks
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that technological progress alone is not enough. Offshore wind did not scale simply because the turbines improved. It scaled because innovation was accompanied by stable policy support, targeted public investment, enabling infrastructure, and the gradual development of industrial confidence. Long-term revenue mechanisms, such as feed-in tariffs and Contracts for Difference, gave developers and investors the visibility needed to commit capital, while public support for demonstration and early deployment helped bridge the gap between technical promise and commercial reality. This is equally relevant for ocean energy today. If the sector is to move from pilot projects to sustained market growth, technology development must be matched by clear and predictable frameworks for deployment.
Supply Chains and Infrastructure Integration
A second critical factor lesson concerns infrastructure. The success of offshore wind relied heavily on the simultaneous evolution of ports, vessels, installation methods, grid connections, and supply chains. Ocean energy is now entering a phase in which these enabling conditions become increasingly important. In many cases, there are valuable opportunities to build on existing maritime and offshore capabilities, including synergies with offshore wind itself. This has the potential to reduce costs, strengthen local industrial value, and accelerate learning across sectors.
Design Convergence and Standardization
The offshore wind trajectory also highlights the ultimate importance of design convergence and standardization. Over time, that industry moved towards a smaller number of dominant design approaches, which allowed for replication, cost reduction and industrial optimisation. In contrast, ocean energy remains more technologically diverse, reflecting the range of resources it seeks to harness, from waves and tidal currents to ocean thermal gradients and salinity differences. This diversity remains a strength at this stage of development. At the same time, international collaboration and shared learning can help identify which solutions are most robust, scalable and investable, allowing the sector to evolve more efficiently and with greater transparency.
Environmental Integration and Social Acceptance
Offshore wind has shown that environmental concerns, permitting complexity and stakeholder engagement are not secondary issues: they are central to successful deployment. In this respect, ocean energy has an opportunity to advance with greater awareness from the outset. Through initiatives such as OES-Environmental, the sector has invested in building a stronger evidence base on environmental effects,
monitoring approaches and risk retirement. This creates an opportunity for ocean energy to progress with a more informed and responsible approach, helping projects gain credibility and public confidence as they move towards larger-scale deployment.
The Cost Curve and Commercial Reality
The broader history of modern renewables — including wind and solar photovoltaics (PV) — shows that early-stage cost barriers can be overcome through sustained innovation, policy support and deployment. However, ocean energy enters a different market context. Unlike wind and solar in their earlier years, it must develop in competition with renewable technologies that are already widely deployed and, in many cases, significantly less expensive.
For this reason, the case for ocean energy cannot rest on cost reduction alone. Its future will also depend on the distinct value it can bring to the energy system. This includes, for example, its predictability, its potential to complement variable renewables such as offshore wind and solar PV, and its possible role in improving grid stability and strengthening the performance of co-located offshore energy systems. In this sense, the path forward for ocean energy is shaped not only by engineering progress, but also by the ability to demonstrate clear system-level advantages and to deploy within targeted frameworks that reflect its unique physical characteristics and strategic value.
