National and Global Projection of the Economic Potential of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and Development of Implementation Scenarios

Abstract

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a renewable energy technology which could help tropical countries worldwide in their shift from conventional to sustainable energy systems. But despite a practicable global potential of 4.4 TW as well as benefits like continuous operation and wide-ranged scalability, OTEC's contribution to the energy transition has been marginal to non-existent, with alternatives like solar and wind power being preferred. This thesis continues the previous work of the OTEC research circle at TU Delft and determines the range of economic potential of OTEC on a national and global level. Supply Curves are modelled for a selected host of tropical islands which are aggregated and extrapolated to project the international and global prospects of the ocean technology. Subsequently, implementation scenarios are designed to simulate OTEC's deployment in the future, on whose basis global experience curves are approximated. It was found that OTEC could comprise a global economic potential of several hundred gigawatts if certain preconditions are fulfilled. Such requirements are low capital expenses, the involvement of public authorities and the presence of high national wholesale electricity prices. Then again, if these conditions are not met, OTEC's profitability declines to zero which underlines the inherent ambivalence of OTEC's economic prosperity. Implementation scenarios proved that OTEC requires rapid installation growth and strong learning effects to render the technology sustainably profitable for any cost estimation. This thesis contributes to the research field of OTEC by tackling several knowledge gaps in literature and conversely, provides plenty of opportunities to pursue further investigations. However, besides a more local scope of investigations, it is argued that pilot plants close to commercial scale are what OTEC needs the most.