Ocean Energy in the Caribbean: Technology Review, Potential Resource and Project Locational Guidance

This publication assesses the potential for deployment of the leading Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) technologies including Fixed Offshore Wind, Floating Offshore Wind, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion across nine Countries of Interest (COI) in the Caribbean region. This is achieved by conducting a technology review, analysing resource levels in each of the COIs, and presenting the outputs of Locational Guidance work identifying preferred areas for potential future project development. This work concludes that MRE can offer a secure supply of indigenous clean energy, that resources are sufficiently abundant to meet the current and future energy demand of each of the COIs many times over, and that the leading MRE technologies are sufficiently advanced to be worthy of immediate prioritisation. This Technical Note draws on and presents outcomes from work undertaken in 2019 as part of a Technical Cooperation Agreement between the IDB and CDB under the Support for Sustainable and Resilient Projects in the Caribbean programme.