A new paper has been published by researchers from The University of Edinburgh exploring the socio-economic benefits of tidal power to the European economy.
The study was conducted as part of the FORWARD2030 project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
This work aims to quantify the wider socio-economic benefits to the European economy arising from building and operating tidal power projects. It considers both the broad-scale with a regional analysis from now until 2050, and offers project-level context from a near-term Orkney case study.
Europe is at the forefront of developing and deploying tidal stream technology, with a significant pipeline of projects to be built over the coming years, mostly in the UK and France, but with a supply chain spanning across Europe. Tidal stream power offers a predictable source of renewable energy, contributing to energy security and net zero targets.
For this study, the socio-economic benefits resulting from developing, building and operating tidal stream projects were modelled and quantified using the common metrics of gross value added (GVA) and full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs and cumulative job-years of employment. As the future is uncertain, credible assumptions were made around the deployment of tidal technology in different markets, the expected cost-reduction trajectory and typical breakdown of project costs, as well as the local content within the supply chain for these projects.
With a similar growth rate to wind power, there is the potential for 20 to 40 GW of tidal stream turbines to be connected to the European electricity grid by 2050. Similarly, there could be an export market of 60 to 80 GW over this same period. While costs for tidal projects are currently higher than many other renewables, these are expected to reduce as more projects are built. An ambitious but achievable "learning rate" of almost 15% has been used, consistent with what has been observed in other comparable technologies in recent decades.
Results at a European level
The total GVA from developing, building and operating tidal stream farms in Europe from now until 2050 could be between 15bn and 46.5bn depending on deployment and supply chain ambition. This is shown in Figure 1. The international export market could add a further 2bn to 26bn in GVA to the European economy. The benefits in striving for a higher ambition in supply chain retention are clear given they are more than double the lower ambition scenario regardless of the deployment assumptions.
