Abstract: Any power production technology should be able to demonstrate that it’s able to comply with current and future environmental regulation and that it demonstrates a considerable surplus in the energy balance being a part of the entire power system.
This means that the energy used throughout all the lifecycle stages; from provision of materials over manufacturing of components and assembly, to deployment and use and eventually the disposal stage, is considerably less than the energy produced by the device during its use/production stage. With this paper, Wave Dragon is the first wave energy developer to publish figures of the energy balance of its technology.
An LCA conducted at the Technical University of Denmark demonstrates that the energy consumed during Wave Dragons life cycle may be returned 20 times throughout its anticipated lifetime of 50 years, according to the EDIP LCA method. But if Wave Dragons power production is compared to production of electricity using fossil fuel the energy can be returned 50 times.
