Tidal and ocean-current power: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Tidal and ocean-current power uses barrages or underwater turbines at a few strong sites. Costs are steel, concrete, magnets and subsea cables, and early projects rely on subsidies, though output is fully predictable.
No public price Tidal and ocean-current power has no public monthly price series: Few projects; built on contracts; no public price.What its price moves with
Turbine structures, foundations and barrage gates use steel that must resist seawater. Steel prices weigh on each project's cost. Corrosion protection and maintenance at sea add further cost to every steel part.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Tidal barrages are concrete dams across estuaries, so cement and civil works dominate their cost. This has stalled barrage plans in many places, including Gujarat. Civil works also take many years.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Many tidal stream turbines use permanent-magnet generators for reliability under water. Neodymium prices and Chinese supply rules affect device costs. Some designs use induction generators to avoid magnets, at some cost in efficiency.
No public price for rare earths, so the link is explained in words only.Subsea cables link turbines to shore, and strong tidal sites are often remote. Cable cost and grid access are major hurdles. Sites in Scotland and France are often far from strong grid points.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Tidal projects share vessels, ports and cable suppliers with offshore wind. That supply chain lowers costs but also competes for scarce vessels. Tidal projects are far smaller, so they have little bargaining power with suppliers.
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.