Ocean waves: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Ocean waves carry wind energy across the sea for free, but almost none is captured because converters are costly and must survive storms. Its value depends on device, mooring and cable costs and on power prices in coastal grids.
No public price Ocean waves has no public monthly price series: A free natural flow; no market price, only capture costs.What its price moves with
Wave energy converters are the only way to use this flow, and few have gone beyond trials. Their high cost per unit, driven by survival in storms, is why most wave energy goes unused.
No public price for wave energy converters, so the link is explained in words only.Converter hulls, moorings and anchors are mostly steel and must be heavy to withstand storms. Steel prices therefore weigh on the cost of capturing waves, more so than for land-based renewables.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Subsea cables carry wave power ashore, and for small arrays the cable can be a large part of total cost. Shared cables and grid points with offshore wind could lower this.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Wave devices need the same ports, vessels and subsea cables as offshore wind, and some designs mount on wind platforms. Offshore wind growth lowers these shared costs but also competes for vessels.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Generators and export cables use copper, so copper prices raise or lower the cost of each converter. For small, early arrays this cost matters more than the free resource. Larger arrays would spread this cost over more output.
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.