This report is the outcome of the feasibility and cost-benefit analysis task which aims to conduct an economic feasibility and cost-benefit analysis, to assess the technologies and funding frameworks to support attractive business cases for both public and private funders. The task focuses on an investigation of the public funding to reduce the costs of ocean energy using both technology push and market pull funding mechanisms. ‘Push’ policies aim to increase the supply of innovation predominantly through research, development, and demonstration actions. ‘Pull’ policies, on the other hand, increase demand for innovation, often through subsidy for deployment. The balance between these types of funding policies is explored together with the overall balance of costs and benefits.
This work highlights the need for a mix of policies to drive down the LCOE of ocean energy whilst minimising the overall investment needed for wide-scale deployment of these technologies. This work also shows the wider benefits to society that can be achieved by ocean energy, and how these benefits can outweigh the costs involved. In all the scenarios discussed in this report, the open-source design tools being developed in the DTOceanPlus project can contribute to the development of the ocean energy sector, facilitating both incremental and step-change cost reductions.
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