Ocean energy sector as contribution towards carbon neutrality (OcEn)

International Collaboration Investment Fund
Close-up view of huge ocean waves 1280 - 720
Project title: Ocean energy sector as contribution towards carbon neutrality (OcEn)
Funded by: UoP International Collaboration Investment Fund
Project duration: November 2024 – November 2028
OcEn
The blue economy and ocean-based carbon mitigation are closely linked, but there are challenges in promoting green development while leveraging the ocean for climate adaptation and mitigation. Achieving global carbon neutrality requires ambitious ocean renewable energy (ORE) targets, yet these initiatives may pressure maritime stakeholders concerned about impacts on their livelihoods, cultural sites, and marine environments. This context highlights the need for global collaboration to identify barriers and facilitate factors affecting ORE projects, ensuring that development is sustainable and equitable.
Using a comparative approach, OcEn will conduct a much-needed assessment of ORE projects and provide opportunities to address governance, societal, environmental, and technological issues that have previously impacted project outcomes in various countries.
The OcEn project aims to conduct research that focuses on ocean energy systems to create fair, environmentally responsible, and climate-responsive futures. Addressing stakeholders' concerns requires a multi-faceted strategy that emphasises community acceptance and meaningful approaches to the impact of ORE projects on host communities. It also requires mechanisms for evaluating community benefits and ensuring equitable sharing of these benefits.
Both tasks call for innovative approaches to gather information, discuss values and visions, and delineate potential benefits from energy infrastructure while ensuring fair representation and outcomes that respond to communities' physical, economic, social, and cultural landscapes.
The focus of the OcEn includes learning from past ORE developments, including suboptimal outcomes, and adapting international best practices for different ORE growth routes. These routes should not only focus on technical and economic metrics but also prioritise communities and the environment in a comprehensive approach to international ORE development.
 

Research themes

Environmental assessment and regulation
Environmental assessments often face legal challenges across jurisdictions because of ecological knowledge gaps. OcEn will explore emergent methods to address these in ORE environmental assessments through the following activities:
  • Siting comparisons
  • Monitoring and cumulative assessment comparisons
  • Equity impact though a Natural Capital approach

Technology readiness and innovation
Manufacturing capabilities, port infrastructure, and vessel availability can influence design choices, which in turn impact ORE technology development and necessitate innovative strategies. OcEn will support the innovation agenda through the following activities:
  • Technological readiness
  • Logistics, operations and maintenance innovations
  • Site characterisation and monitoring

Energy systems and integration

Achieving the required integration of ORE into the electricity grid, transport, and heating systems demands an unprecedented understanding of the entire system, including ocean energy resources, conversion technologies, capacity requirements, energy demand patterns, and overall system dynamics. OcEn will advance the energy systems and integration through the following activities:
  • Analysis of future energy systems
  • Alternative fuels
  • Energy system transformation modelling

Community impacts and community-driven co-design
Drawing on the project's outcomes and overall recommendations, OcEn will develop a roadmap for expanding ORE infrastructure and supply chains that empowers local communities and supports the achievement of net zero targets through the following activities:
  • Mapping and forecasting the ORE future
  • Community-driven co-design
 

Training programme

A central element of OcEn is the integration of PhD students and PDRAs into training programmes to enhance the skills needed for future ORE developments. Knowledge exchange activities will be facilitated through an Innovation Training Programme, workshops, mini-conferences, and academic secondments. The OcEn will adopt a 'push' approach through the Innovation Training Programme, helping PDRAs and PhD students understand and apply scientific research processes.

Innovation Training Programme
The training programme will be delivered through the residential Summer Schools, each focused on OcEn themes. PhD students and PDRAs will disseminate their research across the subjects to creatively address the challenges for international ORE integration.
OcEn PhD student Said Baisa has been accepted onto the UK Graduate Modelling Camp, which will take place from 22–26 September 2025 at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge.

Workshops/mini-conferences
The project will host three workshops/mini-conferences, enabling project members, the wider research community, and stakeholders to exchange ideas on innovation needs, helping to guide the ongoing and future work of OcEn. These events will align with the Innovation Training Programme and will be hosted by the University of Plymouth.

Academic secondments
OcEn plans to enhance collaboration through 16 scholar secondments, each lasting up to eight weeks. These secondments will enable cross-border supervision and knowledge exchange between partners, as well as external academic institutions, industry members, and ORE stakeholders. This approach fosters wide-ranging knowledge sharing, which is crucial for identifying and addressing future research and skills needs for global ORE development. 
Professor Lars Johanning, lead of the OcEn project, hosted guests from Dalian University of Technology in China. Professor Dezhi Ning, a leader in the field of wave energy, visited the University of Plymouth along with two colleagues on 5 June 2025. A high-level meeting was held to discuss the development of an ORE Technology Centre involving Dalian University of Technology, the University of Western Australia, and the University of Plymouth. Professor Ning, Director of the Dalian Key Laboratory of Offshore Renewable Energy, presented a research seminar on offshore OWC devices to a full room of students and researchers. 

OcEn project
Professor Lars Johanning with guests from Dalian University of Technology
OcEn project
Research seminar on offshore OWC devices
 

PhD studentships

OcEn will train four PhD students through international supervision, allowing them to benefit from diverse mentorship styles and global career paths. This transdisciplinary approach will broaden their career options and deepen expertise in engineering, social sciences, and commercialisation. As a result, these early-career researchers will become future leaders in industry, government, or private organisations.
 

Project outputs

Conferences and dissemination
OcEn researchers and experts will be attending international academic conferences, along with a range of dissemination events. 
On 10 July 2025, OcEn, led by Professor Lars Johanning , hosted a Research Day at the University of Plymouth. OcEn post-doctoral researchers and PhD students presented their research and highlighted the importance of their collaborations. The event combined engineering, natural science and social science, revealing the critical importance of interdisciplinary collaborations when creating offshore renewable energy systems that are just and sustainable. Topics included AI-enhanced modelling, community benefit schemes, supply chain network integrated planning and seabird windfarm mitigation strategy.

Secondments
OcEn is enhancing collaboration with scholar secondments lasting up to eight weeks. These enable cross-border supervision and knowledge exchange between partners, as well as with external academic institutions, industry members, and ORE stakeholders. This approach fosters wide-ranging knowledge sharing, which is crucial for identifying and addressing future research and skills needs for global ORE development.
In January 2025, Professor Bryson Robertson from Oregon State University visited the University of Plymouth on secondment. He met PhD student Samuel Jarvis, who he will be supervising in his studies on the modelling of two-way coupling effects in floating offshore wind farms. He also met senior academics and received a tour of the University of Plymouth’s state-of-the-art research facilities in the COAST Laboratory .

Academic publications
Zhao, C., Khalid, F., Lewis, T., Kahn, B., & Johanning, L. (2025). Advancements in mooring systems for the OE35 wave energy converter: Dynamic design and validation. Ocean Engineering.
Wan, C., Yang, C., He, M., Nielsen, P., & Johanning, L. (2025). Hydrodynamic and power conversion performance of a hybrid raft-type WEC and breakwater system using SPH method. Renewable Energy.
Yang, C., Kong, Q., Su, Z., Chen, H., & Johanning, L. (2025). A hybrid model based on chaos particle swarm optimization for significant wave height prediction. Ocean Modelling.
Fu, L., Ning, D., Greaves, D. M., & Johanning, L. (2025). Development of a fully non-linear circular numerical wave basin based on the HOBEM and omni-controlling sources. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements.
Yang, C., Lu, Z., Wan, C., Bai, X. D., & Johanning, L. (2025). Semi-analytical study on the hydrodynamic performance of a cylindrical moon column FPSO with damping plate. Ocean Engineering.
Yang, C., Lu, Z., Li, C., & Johanning, L. (2025). Semi-analytical study on the hydrodynamic performance of an integrated wave energy extraction system consisting of a heaving buoy over a sill and a Jarlan-type breakwater. Ocean Engineering.
 

OcEn partners

The OcEn project is a multinational consortium with leading international research institutions. It aims to address the challenges in ocean renewable energy with the long-term goal of establishing an international ORE Centre capable of providing sustainable research capacity.
OcEn's partners were chosen for their various levels of ORE expertise, including those with and without offshore oil and gas development experience. This is important because regions transitioning from established oil and gas industries to offshore wind (e.g., Louisiana and Aberdeen) have different challenges compared to regions building new supply chains from scratch (e.g., Oregon and the Celtic Sea). 
 

Accelerating global efforts to reduce carbon emissions

Lars JohanningProfessor Lars Johanning
Associate Head of School - Research

Countries worldwide are setting ambitious targets for Ocean Renewable Energy (ORE) as part of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. While these targets are crucial, they can raise concerns among communities about potential impacts on their livelihoods, cultural sites, and marine environments.
The integration of ORE depends on a complex interplay of natural, technological, economic, and social factors, requiring careful assessment at various scales. Past experiences with renewable energy projects highlight the importance of community engagement; opposition can arise if local concerns are overlooked. This can lead to perceived inequities in benefits, such as community benefit schemes and job access. 
To achieve sustainable transitions in ORE, a radical shift in thinking and practices is needed, particularly to avoid perpetuating historical inequities that marginalise certain groups. Engaging communities and policymakers in collaborative decision-making is essential for effective knowledge co-production. The US, UK, Australia, and Canada are at different stages of planning their ORE futures, presenting an opportunity for global collaboration to address equity risks proactively. By fostering inclusive approaches, these nations can improve community perceptions and ensure that ORE benefits reach historically disadvantaged groups.
 

OcEn experts

OcEn researchers

Centre for Decarbonisation and Offshore Renewable Energy 

In response to climate change imperatives, we are bringing together a critical mass of leading research and expertise from across the University of Plymouth. Through co-creation and collaboration with partners from business, government and key communities from across the globe, the Centre aims to be a beacon for the University’s whole-system transdisciplinary approach to solutions-oriented research, accelerating sustainable developments in decarbonisation and renewable energy.
 
Centre for Decarbonisation and Offshore Renewable Energy