Ocean currents: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Ocean currents and tidal streams flow steadily and for free, but capturing them needs underwater turbines that are costly to install and maintain. Device, foundation and cable costs, not the resource, set its value.
No public price Ocean currents has no public monthly price series: A free natural flow; no market price, only capture costs.What its price moves with
Tidal stream and ocean current turbines are the converters for this flow. Only a few pilot arrays run, such as in Scotland, so their high cost per unit keeps most current energy unused.
No public price for tidal and ocean-current power, so the link is explained in words only.Turbine structures, foundations and moorings are steel and must resist strong flows and corrosion. Steel prices therefore weigh on the capital cost of each device. Corrosion protection and heavy foundations add further steel and coating costs.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Many underwater turbines use permanent-magnet generators with neodymium magnets, which are compact and need little maintenance. Rare earth prices and Chinese export rules affect their cost. Some designs avoid magnets by using induction generators instead.
No public price for rare earths, so the link is explained in words only.Subsea cables bring the power ashore, and sites with strong currents are often far from the grid. Cable cost and grid access are major hurdles for current power. Sharing export cables between devices is one way to cut it.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.