Marine renewables in Energy Systems: Impacts of climate data, generators, energy policies, opportunities, and untapped potential for 100% decarbonised systems

The Energy Transition requires meticulous planning, taking into consideration economic, technical, social, and resource constraints. In Europe ambitious targets have been set for system electrification, however, integrating the potential of marine renewables have not been thoroughly investigated. This study extends the framework of PyPSA-Eur into PyPSA-Eur-MREL that for the first time incorporates all marine renewables, using high resolution datasets, that uncover the potential of marine renewables. Marine renewables are modelled in terms of power estimations, deployment strategies and revised packing density, and expected benefits for 2030, and 2050 across all European Countries are quantified. Higher spatio-temporal data have an immediate impact in estimates, and reduction of energy storage by 73%. Wind energy has a reduced installation capacity by 50%, but the higher fidelity of resource matches production to demand and reduces curtailments up to 60%. System costs with high resolution data are 40% reduced to 160 billion € for a 2030 100% renewable reliant system. The benefits of having more marine renewables are not limited to cost and more efficient demand matching, reduced energy storage, but it also with the area required to decarbonize the system. The results are encouraging and outline the importance and further need for marine renewable energies. • A transparent way to consider the integration and economics for marine renewables with adjustable learning rates. • High resolution wave data install 22 GW of wave energy in 2030, while coarse wave data only 6 GW. • High resolution wind data install 50% less wind capacity, reduce curtailments by 50%, making wind more valuable. • Marine renewables have higher energy packing density from onshore, leading to up to 63% less area used. • Higher climate data spatial resolution lead 73% less storage requirements.