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Marine renewable energy (MRE) encompasses the harvest of energy from the movement of ocean waters in the form of either currents or waves, as well as temperature and salinity differentials. To date, most MRE development has focused on utility-scale electrical grid generation, but a growing body of work focuses on non-grid applications in the blue economy where MRE could provide power on-site and at the scale needed for specific maritime sectors. One of the blue economy sectors with promising applications for MRE is ocean observations using both mobile and stationary platforms. This paper documents the steps and results of engaging with experts across the myriad ocean observation platforms and capabilities to inform five use cases. These use cases include descriptions of specific ocean observation applications performing measurements of high societal value (e.g., data for weather forecasting and tsunami detection) that closely resemble specific sensing systems and, in most cases, are placed in a particular area of the ocean. Rapid resource assessments (i.e., first-order estimates) were performed at these locations to determine the suitability of marine and other renewable energy sources. From the information gathered so far, MRE has significant potential to enable improved ocean observation missions, expand ocean observing capacity, and develop as an industry in parallel with the needs of our changing oceans.

Marine renewable energy (MRE) is in the early stages of contributing to the energy portfolios of the United States and many other nations around the world. Although many MRE developers are designing devices that will harvest energy to contribute to the electrical grid from waves, tides, and ocean currents, a number of other promising maritime markets could be supplied with MRE power at sea. These maritime markets are often less price sensitive, have fewer options than utility-scale electricity markets, and can handle some degree of intermittency. Some of the promising maritime markets that could benefit from co-located power generation include ocean observation nodes, underwater recharge of autonomous vehicles, desalination of seawater for remote coastal areas, offshore aquaculture, shoreline protection and electricity generation, providing electricity and freshwater following coastal emergencies, providing power to islanded and isolated communities, powering and cooling nearshore underwater data centers, recharging of electric surface vessels, and personal charging of electronics. Pairing of MRE power generation with these and other maritime markets is in the early stages, but the potential for synergy and growth of MRE coupled to these markets is promising.

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