Pathways to achieving sustainability – a vision for offshore renewable energy in 2030, 2040, 2050

The development of offshore renewables is globally recognised as an essential part of the solution to address the climate crisis. In the development of these new technologies, we retain the responsibility and best practices for assessing potential environmental and socio-economic effects, mitigating unacceptable changes, and being prepared to reverse course if we find that irreparable damage is being done. The positive vision for offshore renewables development presented in this abstract was developed partly based on UN DOALOS regional workshops outcomes and will be a part of the upcoming UN World Ocean Assessment III, chapter on offshore renewables. It presents the best practices and tools needed to realise this vision by 2030, 2040, and 2050.

Achieving this vision requires a set of best practices and tools, as well as filling gaps in our knowledge of offshore renewables. A plan for applying the tools and addressing the gaps globally is presented that includes an implementation schedule.   

The positive offshore renewable energy vision must encompass multiple sectors and cross-sectoral activities related to the ocean in a sustainable manner, including environmental sustainability, economic growth, social inclusion and equity, contributing to a sustainable blue economy in 2050. Increasing coordination and cooperation among diverse marine sectors will maximise the sustainable use of the oceans. A large-scale roll-out of sustainable offshore technologies worldwide will require promoting offshore renewable energy technologies in developing countries, including concessional and preferential terms, mutual understanding, and fair equity sharing.

The vision predicts the surface of the oceans occupied by offshore renewable energy to increase 10-fold in 2050 as compared to 2024, while technology advancements will allow the energy yield to increase 40-fold by moving further away from shore. Multiple sources of ORE (offshore wind, offshore floating solar, ocean thermal energy conversion, tidal stream, wave energy) will be developed and will need to share offshore space with other industries, such as aquaculture, hydrogen production, and critical mineral recovery, to optimise ocean space use. Nature-inclusive and environmentally friendly designs will help to avoid and minimise environmental impacts, increase biodiversity, resulting in climate change mitigation and alleviation of the biodiversity crisis.

The vision requires that most governments will adopt renewable energy goals, including offshore renewable energy and the rapid scale-up of ocean energy technologies beyond offshore bottom-fixed wind, including offshore floating wind, wave, tidal, offshore floating solar and OTEC (as well as combinations of these), with the ambition of 4 terawatts of ocean energy installed worldwide by 2050, contributing significantly to limiting global warming to 1.5°C.