A classification system for global wave energy resources based on multivariate clustering

Assessment of wave power stability and classification with two global datasets

“…The findings display similarity with Reguero et al (2012), with spatial distribution being more in-line with ERA-Interim. Our results also support the proposal by Fairley et al (2020) to focus more on specific class regions for wave energy development that are most commonly found. Moderate resources have lower variability, enhanced stability and can be accessed by a large number of countries.…”

“…With a wide array of datasets, available reproduction of the wave climate/energy content can differ in its spatial distribution based on the model used and configuration. This was highlighted by the work of Fairley et al (2020), which used a k-clustering method to distinguish between wave energy regions. Their analysis classified the global regions according to power content and determined that 55% of most areas are exposed to moderate resources.…”

“…All use a power matrix, the equivalent to a power curve, to estimate the production of carbon-free electricity per seastate. However, the selection of a WEC is far from a trivial process, and there is the need to properly assess the long-term wave resource changes that directly will affect energy production (Fairley et al 2020). Wave resource potential and hence potential power production can vary even at sites with close geographic proximity, therefore multiple marine energy sites can reduced times of non-generation (Fairley et al 2017).…”

Are smaller microplastics missing?

“…suggests that the coastal area located along the western boundary of each basin is likely the major source region for the plastics in each accumulation zone, except that a large fraction of the plastics in the South Indian Ocean comes from South East Asia 40 . Compared with a map of categorized wave energy levels along the world coastlines 42 , the wave energy level in the potential source regions for a basin (Table 1) appears correlated with the W ⇤ value for the accumulation zone of the basin in the emission scenario considering impervious area of land ( Fig. 3c; the results for the other scenario are found in Table 1 and Supplementary Fig.…”

“…It is interesting that the Seto Inland Sea has a very large W ⇤ (Fig.2d and Supplementary Table S1), which may be due to some local conditions or to the conditions of some remote locations where the microplastics originate. It is indeed possible that some microplastics in this region originate from the Philippine Sea, where wave energy is large 42 ,…”