Ocean waves: Abundance
A big flow, but how much can be caught?
What this tab covers How much of this energy there is: the natural flow or stock, the share that could be harnessed, and how much is used today, compared with world primary energy use (592 EJ in 2024).About 2 TW of wave power reaches the world's ocean-facing coasts, roughly 11% of world primary energy use, and only a small fraction is extractable. Grid-connected wave power is still measured in individual demonstration plants.
A flow: renewed continuouslyHow much there is
| Measure | Value | Compared with world energy use | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wind energy input to ocean surface layers (all forms, including waves) | 7 to 36 TW5 | about 0.4 to 1.9 times world primary energy use | Lueck and Reid estimate cited by Wunsch and Ferrari; poorly constrained. |
| Wave power arriving at coastlines (30 nautical miles offshore) | 2.11 plus or minus 0.05 TW4 | about 11% of world primary energy use (66.5 EJ a year) | NOAA WaveWatch III data, six years (Gunn and Stock-Williams 2012). Earlier studies gave 0.8 to 3 TW using older data and models. |
| Theoretical wave potential (IPCC SRREN) | 32,000 (29,500 where wave power exceeds 5 kW/m) TWh per year9 | about 19% of world primary energy use (115 EJ a year; about 3.7 TW) | Mørk et al. (2010), as assessed by the IPCC; the 29,500 TWh (106 EJ) figure counts only areas above 5 kW/m. Measured further offshore than the 2.1 TW coastal estimate. |
| Extractable with a state-of-the-art wave energy converter | about 97 GW (4.6% of the incident resource)3 | about 0.5% of world primary energy use (3.1 EJ a year) | About 4.6% of the incident resource (Gunn and Stock-Williams, as reviewed by Ramos-Marin and Guedes Soares). Depends heavily on device and spacing assumptions. |
| United States, theoretical and technical wave resource | 3,300 and 1,400 TWh per year6 | about 2% and 0.9% of world primary energy use | All 50 states to the edge of the exclusive economic zone; Alaska alone 2,000 TWh theoretical. |
| World primary energy use (baseline) | 592 EJ in 20241 | 1 | Total energy supply, Energy Institute. |
Estimates of the global wave resource cluster around 2 to 4 TW. Kinsman's 1965 guess of 2 TW is broadly confirmed by a modern wave-model estimate of 2.1 TW at 30 nautical miles from shore, while the IPCC renewables report gives 32,000 TWh a year (about 3.7 TW), or 29,500 TWh where waves exceed 5 kW/m. The spread (0.8 to 3 TW in earlier studies) comes from where the line is drawn (open ocean or near the coast), from the minimum wave power counted and from the wave data used.
The extractable part is much smaller, about 97 GW with a state-of-the-art converter, because converters capture only part of the energy passing them and cannot be placed along every coast. Use today is negligible: the Mutriku breakwater plant in Spain, with 14 oscillating water column units operating since 2011, is described as the only wave farm in the world supplying the grid regularly.
Sources
- Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 (74th edition) Energy Institute (with KPMG and Kearney), 2025
- Review of Wave Energy Resource Characterisation, Metrics, and Global Assessments (Ramos-Marin and Guedes Soares, Journal of Marine Science and Application 24, 53-75) Springer / Harbin Engineering University, 2025
- Quantifying the global wave power resource (Gunn and Stock-Williams, Renewable Energy 44, 296-304) Tethys Engineering (PNNL), 2012
- Vertical mixing, energy, and the general circulation of the oceans (Wunsch and Ferrari, Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 36, 281-314) Annual Reviews (copy hosted by Ifremer), 2004
- Marine Energy in the United States: An Overview of Opportunities (Kilcher, Fogarty and Lawson, NREL/TP-5700-78773) National Renewable Energy Laboratory / US DOE, 2021
- Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation, Chapter 6: Ocean Energy (Lewis et al.), sections 6.2.1 and 6.2.4 IPCC, 2011