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Communicating climate change in marine
renewable energy
Ali M. Trueworthy, and Bryony L. DuPont
Abstract—As scholars in the field of marine energy,
we often engage with the topic of climate change as a
motivation for our work. When we do, we are constructing
a relationship between climate change and marine energy.
The relationship which we construct impacts our ability to
effectively address the crisis. In this paper, we perform a
textual analysis of papers from the 13th European Wave and
Tidal Energy Conference (2019) to characterize the common
construction of climate change among marine renewable
energy scholars. We then examine how that construction is
reflected in marine renewable energy technological design.
We show that marine renewable energy scholars typically
engage with climate change in a way which assumes that
marine renewable energy is a potential part of a solution
by its very nature as a renewable energy source. This
assumption preempts any assessment that we may make
with regard to the potential impacts of our work on climate
change. By shifting how we communicate about climate
change as a field, we may be able to center the ecological
crisis in our design work, allowing it to reshape the
fundamental design challenge. This could lead to improved
integration of technical development and environmental
impacts research, marine energy concepts which address
human and environmental needs which are threatened by
climate change (such as the need for food security and
social equity), or new design tools which help designers
evaluate and improve a technology’s relationship with the
community and the environment.
Index Terms—climate change, climate criteria, cognitive
frames, communication, design, marine energy.
I. INTRODUCTION
CLIMATE change is the disruption of the earth’s
natural cycles due to abnormally high concentra-
tions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which
lead to warming average global temperatures. Warm-
ing temperatures, in turn, bring changes in weather
patterns, rising sea levels, and more severe storms.
Those changes lead to further disruptions, including
displacement of humans, changing animal migration
patterns, desertification, strain on economic systems by
flooding and storm damage, and heightened threats to
food and water resources. Communities of low socio-
economic status tend to be at greater risk from the
impacts of climate change than middle and upper-
class communities [1]. Scientists have deemed a 1.5C
increase in global average temperatures to be likely
This work was supported in part by the United States Department
of Energy through the Wave-SPARC and Lab Collaboration Project
under grant DEEE0006816.0005.
Authors are affiliated with the Pacific Marine Energy Center. A.M.
Trueworthy is a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering at
Oregon State University 350 Batcheller Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331
U.S.A (e-mail: truewoal@oregonstate.edu).
B.L. DuPont is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at
Oregon State University 216 Rogers Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331 U.S.A
(e-mail: Bryony.DuPont@oregonstate.edu).
between 2030 and 2052, and with it, many of these ef-
fects likely as well [2]. To address this problem we have
turned to—among other things—renewable energy as
a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Marine
energy technologies are a part of the suite of renewable
energy technologies, albeit a relatively nascent part.
Marine energy faces some serious challenge econom-
ically, technically, socially, and politically. Currently,
the estimated cost of grid-scale wave energy is high
compared to more mature renewables and fossil fuel
generation technologies [3]. An estimate of wave en-
ergy potential in the Pacific Northwest United States,
the area with the largest wave resource in the continen-
tal U.S., claims that capacity for wave energy farms
given current technology is about 500MW, which is
approximately 1/9th the currently installed capacity of
wind energy in the region [4]. Though this assessment
is based on currently available wave energy tech-
nologies, and technology should continue to improve
with further R&D, this figure highlights the relatively
small near-term contribution of wave energy when it
comes to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from the
electricity sector.
Despite that small contribution, approaching marine
energy with respect to its potential impact on climate
change is important for four reasons. First, with con-
tinued technology development, the amount of energy
that can be provided by wave energy could increase.
Stakeholders may seek decentralized and diversified
energy production. Second, grid connection is not the
only application of wave energy. Off-grid applications
gaining in popularity include the powering of un-
derwater vehicles and ocean research, desalination,
aquaculture, and remote or island communities [5]. It
is important to consider how these local and niche
solutions fit into the bigger picture of climate solutions,
especially given that potential off-grid applications are
met with both excitement and concern [6] [7] [8]. Third,
the problem of climate change is about far more than
emissions. It is about ecological (referring to the web
of species and environments that includes humans)
destruction. Therefore, when we discuss climate solu-
tions, technological and otherwise, emissions reduction
is not the only factor to account for. Lastly, although
the role of marine energy in directly mitigating climate
change might be small compared to more mature re-
newable energy technologies, its future is within the
larger ocean and energy systems that will play a major
role. Oceans store approximately 25% of human carbon
dioxide emissions [9] and the burning of fossil fuels
for energy accounts for about 70% of greenhouse gas
emissions [10], meaning changes to our ocean and
2
ocean energy systems will undoubtedly play a major
role in mitigating climate change. Marine energy could
change the way we use our oceans by enabling offshore
electricity conversion or by balancing ecosystem pro-
tection and energy generation priorities. Marine energy
could be a generating technology among a diverse web
of technologies that bring energy-related greenhouse
gas emissions to zero.
Climate change is a major problem which is clearly
connected to marine energy. Through the way we, as
marine energy scholars, communicate about climate
change, we determine the role that it plays in our tech-
nical and scientific pursuits. The role climate change
plays in our research, in turn, influences our perceived
connection between climate change and marine energy.
It is, therefore, worthwhile to examine the way we
communicate about the climate crisis.
Much of the communication research at the intersec-
tion of climate change and renewable energy discusses
the ways that “we” (referring to scholars or activists)
can communicate about renewable energy in such a
way that it gains public support [11] [12] [13]. Endres
et al. point out that there is insufficient examination of
expert-to-expert rhetorics which ”are especially critical
as they significantly shape the future of particular
aspects of energy resources, production, and consump-
tion” [14]. Outside of energy fields, there is a significant
body of scholarship which examines internal rhetoric
in scientific disciplines, which is well-summarized by
Endres et al. We rely on the conceptual work on
cognitive framing by linguistics scholar George Lakoff
as a guide in our examination [15].
In this paper, we analyze the proceedings of the
2019 European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference as
a current and representative sample of inter-expert
academic communication. In doing so, we identify the
”frame” through which we understand the relationship
between climate change and marine energy. We shed
light on how that frame is constructed and how it ef-
fects our work. Finally, we suggest ways in which new
frames for the relationship between climate change and
marine energy could offer new opportunities in the
field.
II. ANALYS IS O F EWTEC 2019 PAPERS
A. Methods of Data Analysis
There were 278 paper contributions to the 2019 Euro-
pean Wave and Tidal Energy Conference. We ran a full-
text search of all the papers for ten different phrases re-
lated to climate change. These phrases included, climate
change,global warming,decarboni (given the combination
of British and American English we wanted to include
decarbonize, decarbonise, decarbonization, and decar-
bonisation), climate emergency,climate disruption,climate
crisis,climate resilience,greenhouse,CO2, and ecological.
For each phrase, we filtered the results to eliminate
instances in which the phrase was only present in the
references or in naming an organization. For ecological
we only included cases in which that phrase was
referring to impacts related to fossil fuel use. More
TABLE I
KEYWOR D SEARCH O N EWTEC 2019 PAPERS
Phrase Occurrences Independent Occurrences
climate change 23 12
global warming 5 1
decarboni 10 4
climate emergency 0 0
climate disruption 1 1
climate crisis 0 0
climate resilience 0 0
ecological 2 1
greenhouse 12 5
CO2 12 5
The number of occurrences are filtered as described in Section
II-A, and the number of independent occurrences indicates
the number of papers that contain that key word, but none
of the others.
commonly, ecological is used to refer, somewhat generi-
cally, to the natural world. We were not concerned with
those uses. In total, there are 42 papers that use these
terms, with 29 that only contain one of the ten terms,
and 13 which contain multiple. The counts according
to keyword are shown in Table I.
Examining each paper identified through the full-
text search, we noted the location in the text where
the key terms appeared and the context in which
they were used. Through our initial examination, we
identified some common trends in the way in which
terms are used, including a normative logic used to
motivate marine energy development and an external-
ization of the need to address climate change and/or
greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, we performed a
second examination to determine if those trends were
as common as they initially appeared.
B. Results
The total number of papers in which one of the
key terms was present is about 15%. In more than
half of those papers, the authors mentioned one of the
key terms exclusively in the introduction. The location
within the paper in which the key term is present for
each paper is shown in Figure 1. Only three papers
refer to climate change or emissions in the conclusion.
37 of the papers mention one of the key terms in
the introduction, indicating, as one would expect, that
the relationship between climate change and marine
energy is predominantly one in which the former is
a motivation for work on the latter. Furthermore, the
relatively small number of papers that mention climate
change anywhere outside of the introduction suggests
that addressing the climate emergency has not been
adopted as a fundamental tenet of research and design
methodologies.
There were two common trends among the papers.
First, 27 papers deployed a particular logic regarding
the relationship between marine energy and climate
change. The logic can be generalized as follows: climate
change is caused by greenhouse gas emission*, we
need to do something about climate change*, renew-
able energy is a means of reducing greenhouse gas
TRUEWORTHY et al.: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN MARINE RENEWABLE ENERGY 3
Number of Papers
0
5
10
15
20
25
Intro Only Body Only Conclusion
Only
Intro & Body Intro, Body &
Conclusion
Abstract Only
Location of Terms in Text
Fig. 1. The location of within the paper in which key terms appeared.
One datapoint per paper.
emissions, marine energy is a promising renewable
energy, therefore we should study marine energy.
Second, the first two parts of this logic—that climate
change is caused by greenhouse gas emission and that
we need to do something about climate change—are
often implied but not directly stated. For example,
Almoghayer et al. begin their paper, “With the rapid
increase in global warming, renewable energy has be-
come an important option for electricity generation,
as one of the most efficient and effective measures to
slow down climate change” [16]. They go on, “Among
the many available renewable energy sources, tides are
favoured for their substance (up to TeraWatts globally)
and due to their predictability” [16]. We see here the
deployment of the normative logic described above
along with an implicit assumption of what causes
global warming and why it is a problem. In the case
of the single paper that mentions decarbonization only
in the conclusion, there is a similar assumption of
understanding. When the motivation to address cli-
mate change is not simply assumed, it is externalized.
Authors cite government renewable energy targets or
a general ”attention” on renewable energy as a reason
to move forward with research. Implicit or externalized
motivators for addressing climate change are used in
25 of the papers, whereas statements regarding the
potential impacts of climate change are only used four
times.
The independent occurrences of greenhouse and CO2
(in which climate change or a similar phase is not
present), of which there were 10 total, rely on an
assumed understanding of the relationship between
climate change and emissions. Of the 15 papers that do
not use the normative logic we have outlined, seven of
them do not use one of the key terms to motivate their
work, but instead within their work. These include
papers which include a lifecycle analysis or discussion
of metrics. Five of the papers that do not use the
normative logic contain a significantly more complex
discussion of their motivation. For instance, Lemessy
et al. discuss objectives to reduce abuse of natural
resources and to meet basic human needs [17].
III. DISCUSSION
We would not expect that all papers written for a
conference specifically on wave and tidal energy begin
by explaining the motivation for research in those
areas. Furthermore, there are other motivations, aside
from those related to climate change, that researchers
use to introduce work in marine energy, including
energy security and profitability. It is also valid in
the context of the conference to assume that people
understand the relationship between emissions and
climate change. With that said, we are not arguing that
the relationship between climate change and renewable
energy communicated in these papers is unfounded or
inaccurate, but rather that it is a narrow conceptualized
relationship which impedes our ability to effectively
address climate change through work in marine energy.
The normative logical connecting climate change
to marine energy and the externalization of climate
change as a motivator to the industry have conse-
quences for the way that we, as experts in the field,
measure success. The ways we measure success, in
turn, impact the way we do our work and, through the
technology design process, the device concepts which
we develop.
A. Cognitive Framing
To root this idea in scholarly work, we can think
of that normative logic as the cognitive frame through
which we understand the association between marine
energy and climate change. Cognitive frames are “un-
conscious structures” through which we make sense
of words and knowledge which is presented to us
[15]. Frames are activated through words. When we
say ”climate change” in the context marine energy,
the normative logic described above is the structure
activated in our brains. The parties upon which we
externalize motivation (governing bodies, the public,
etc.) are a part of that structure. We reproduce this
frame in the introductions to papers and presentations,
and in other forums as well.
As this frame constructs all renewable energy tech-
nologies as intrinsic solutions to climate change, we
choose to refer to it as the Intrinsic Solution Frame.
It ascribes value to a select set of facts and data
related to climate change, namely those related to
emissions. Though these facts are scientifically trust-
worthy, they are incomplete. Emissions-related data
grants only a partial understanding of the problem of
climate change and therefore only a partial understand-
ing of the potential solutions. Climate communication
expert George Marshall argues that “the largest, most
extraordinary, and damaging misframing of all [. . . ]
was that climate change could be defined entirely and
exclusively as a problem of gases” [18]. The Intrinsic
Solution Frame adopts this very ”misframing.”
We equate energy generation to emissions reduction
and emissions reduction to climate change mitigation.
This is reflected in the fact that, beyond energy produc-
tion and embodied emissions, we do not have metrics
for assessing climate change mitigation. This could
explain why many authors mention climate change
4
exclusively in the introduction of papers. There are
neither metrics nor frames for understanding the im-
pacts of specific work (as opposed to the field more
generally) on the mitigation of climate change.
B. Evaluating Technologies
Further reinforcing the use of the Intrinsic Solution
Frame in marine energy, most researchers lean on this
frame—intentionally or otherwise—to make it unnec-
essary to evaluate the potential of a specific technology
or project to mitigate climate change by any other
means than the amount of clean energy it produces.
We have already assumed the technology to be part
of the renewable energy solution, so we only evaluate
performance via how much energy a technology can
produce and at what monetary cost, exemplified by
the use of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) as the
primary metric of success for marine energy devices,
despite its documented shortcomings [19] [20] [21].
LCOE reduces the potential benefits of a technology
to the energy it produces and reduces the potential
costs to those costs which can be measured monetarily,
thereby undervaluing any benefits other than energy
production and any costs which economists might refer
to as ”externalities,” such as environmental harms or
the embodied emissions and energy used in construc-
tion and operations. Other methods of performance
assessment, such as the Technology Performance Level
(TPL) assessment, have expanded the measure of suc-
cess beyond energy production and cost, but remain
less commonly used than LCOE [22] and they fall short
in qualifying performance in terms of climate change
mitigation. Ruiz-Minguela et al. use “climate change
mitigation” as one of the factors in their “holistic
assessment of wave energy design options,” but the
metric only considers the emissions produced over the
lifecycle of the technology [23].
By relying on the Intrinsic Solution Frame, which
leads us to understand the connection between climate
change and marine energy to be singular, we are able to
overlook other potential connections. For instance, the
marine energy field tends to approach the ecological
impacts of marine renewable energy separately from
technological development. At this conference, this
is evident in the separate research tracks. In device
design, developers tend to adopt systems or product
engineering approaches which do not facilitate inte-
gration of ecological knowledge [22]. Santos-Herran
et al. point out that marine energy researchers have
extensively studied the economics and supply security
aspects of marine energy, but that the quantitative as-
sessment of environmental impacts which is important
to policy makers is often missing [24].
C. Tertiary Motivations
We tend not to qualify performance in terms of
climate change mitigation because of our singular as-
sumption regarding the relationship between climate
change and renewable energy and the conceptual dis-
tance that assumption puts between climate change
and technology development. The Intrinsic Solution
Frame and our common measures of success prevent
us from exploring other objectives that reduce climate
impacts, such as reducing energy demand. As the
time that humans have to dramatically reduce carbon
emissions to avoid catastrophic global increases in
temperature shrinks, major agencies and academic re-
searchers in policy and social science have given more
attention to pathways for demand reduction, but these
considerations have remained outside the purview of
renewable energy development [19] [20] [21]. Yet, there
are instances when renewable energy generation could
reduce energy demand. For example, the generation of
electricity through ocean energy could replace diesel
generation in remote communities, thereby reducing
the need for transportation of diesel fuel [25]. Here we
see an example of the kind of projects which are possi-
ble when we look beyond the Intrinsic Solution Frame.
We will further discuss the opportunities related to
reframing the relationship between climate change and
marine energy in the following section.
Marine renewable energy researchers presume the
motivation for addressing climate change, either im-
plicitly or by attributing motivation to government
policy or renewable energy targets. By doing so, we
avoid the need to formally acknowledge why climate
change is a problem that needs to be explicitly handled.
The exigence to, for instance, prevent the suffering of
species (including humans) on Earth is not part of
our scholarly conversations. Previously, we noted that
the Intrinsic Solution Frame elevates climate change-
related knowledge which concerns emissions. It ne-
glects climate change-related knowledge concerning
ocean acidification, species loss, inequity, food and
water insecurity, etc. That is not to say that we as
individual researchers do not understand these things,
but that the frame through which we relate our work
in marine energy to climate change does not provide a
means of understanding that relationship to all aspects
of climate change.
D. Technology Development and Ecological Impacts
When we consider a broader spectrum of climate
change-related knowledge in relation to marine energy,
it becomes more difficult to separate ecological impacts
from technology development. Consider the paper by
Lopes de Almeida entitled REEFS: An artificial reef
for wave energy harnessing and shore protection – A new
concept towards multipurpose sustainable solutions [26]. In
this paper, Lopes de Almeida does not reproduce the
Intrinsic Solution Frame. Instead, they include details
on several air pollutants, human deaths, and envi-
ronmental degradation and suggest that wave energy
could not only provide a source of non-polluting en-
ergy, but that a specific technology could also function
as an artificial reef, protecting coastal areas under
increased threat of flooding [26].
There is a challenge of scale, both spatially and
temporally, when it comes to considering technology
development for the purpose of emissions reduction
simultaneously with the technology’s ecological and
human impacts. Ecological impacts are often local and
TRUEWORTHY et al.: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN MARINE RENEWABLE ENERGY 5
short-term, whereas the benefits of offsetting emissions
with renewable energy are global and long-term. A
pathway forward will require a productive way of
juxtaposing these scales and thinking about ecological
impacts and technology development together. This
will require a reframing of the relationship between
climate change and marine energy.
E. Beyond Scholarly Work
It is worthwhile to note that the Intrinsic Solution
Frame present in scholarly circles is reflected in both
public rhetoric and the publicized priorities of funding
agencies. In the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office
of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy 2016-2020
strategic plan, the first sentence reads, “Today, the
United States is faced with a national imperative to
address the enormous challenge presented by climate
change and to seize upon the multi-trillion dollar eco-
nomic opportunity that a transition to a global clean
energy economy will provide” [27]. At the highest
level, climate change appears as a key motivator, but
as priorities and funding trickle down to calls for pro-
posals for research grants or individual assessment of
energy technologies, the acknowledgement of climate
change as a key motivator is phased out, similar to the
way that we, as researchers, include climate change as
a high-level motivator in introductory paragraphs, but
rarely return to the topic. Public perceptions related to
climate change and renewable energy reflect the diffi-
culty that researchers have juxtaposing the two scales
of environmental impacts of marine energy. Positive
feelings about marine energy tend to be related to
the need for alternatives to fossil fuels, while negative
feeling are associated with the potential local environ-
mental and human impacts [28].
IV. OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH ALTERNATIVE FRAMES
In the previous sections, we characterize the way that
marine energy scholars communicate the connection
between marine energy and climate change in scholarly
work and use concepts of cognitive framing and evi-
dence from the field of marine energy to identify some
of the implications of our communication. The Intrinsic
Solution Frame that we use privileges some knowledge
about climate change over other knowledge, and it
depicts a singular, intrinsic connection between marine
energy and climate change. In the remainder of this
paper, we will outline some suggestions for going
forward with communication and technical work that
embrace a broader scope of knowledge about climate
change and other potential connections between cli-
mate change and marine energy.
We can begin by considering the ways in which
a technology could contribute to mitigating climate
change. There is no published list of requirements for
technical solutions to the climate emergency, therefore
there is no agreed-upon way of evaluating them. We
have surveyed literature on climate solutions to pro-
pose a preliminary set of requirements which we call
climate criteria for renewable energy systems meant to
address the climate emergency. These include:
•Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
•Be able to be quickly implemented and adopted
•Avoid Carbon Lock-in
•Maintain Social Legitimacy and Significance
•Protect food and water resources
•Protect human, nonhuman, and ecosystem health
•Enable other adaptive or mitigative technologies
or practices
•Adapt to changing contexts
We detail each of these criteria below.
A. Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Le Qu´
er´
e et al. show that the two major drivers
of declining CO2 emissions were the replacement of
fossil fuels by renewable energy, and decreases in
energy use (in the eighteen developed countries that
have decarbonized in the decade from 2005 to 2015)
[29]. It is important to understand the ability of re-
newable energy to decrease CO2 emissions [30], [31].
Instead of simply using measures of energy production
to describe a technology’s ability to mitigate climate
change, an accurate estimation of emissions reduction
requires us to account for the greenhouse gas emissions
over the technology’s lifecycle including manufactur-
ing, installation, operation, and decommissioning [30],
the potential to reduce energy demand [32], and the
potential to offset higher-emitting energy production
resources in the long term [33]. It is difficult to estimate
demand reduction from a renewable energy technology
predictively or in-situ, but tracing the pathways to
emission reduction via demand reduction, efficiency,
and low-carbon energy alternatives is an important
part of working toward climate solutions [32].
Understanding the potential to offset higher-emitting
technologies in the long term requires knowledge of
where a technology fits into the energy system. This
knowledge can help us account for grid benefits, such
as stability, and locational dependencies. An analysis
by Hausfather shows that even though natural gas
could replace coal as a lower-emission technology, it
could stall the adoption of near-zero-emissions tech-
nologies so much that greenhouse gas emissions in-
crease. Such an analysis shows us the importance of
understanding what technology we are replacing and
what the long term effect of that replacement are [33].
B. Adoptability and Carbon Lock-in
Whether a technology is implementable and adopt-
able depends on many factors aside from emissions
reduction. These factors include cost, risk, and uncer-
tainty. Rapid decarbonization is necessary to address
climate change quickly enough to avoid massive, detri-
mental changes to the earth’s natural systems [34].
This means that it is not only important whether a
technology can be adopted, but it is important how
quickly it can be adopted. Wilson et al. refer to this
requirement as “rapid technology development” [35].
Rapid technology development is facilitated by short
diffusion timescales and fast learning rates (which
quickly decrease uncertainty), both of which are more
6
common in granular technologies. Granular technolo-
gies have a small per-unit size and cost, and scale up by
number rather than size. Their modular construction
leads to lower-risk investments and allows for faster
learning. That faster learning is part of rapid innova-
tion cycles which can lead to quicker entry of low-
carbon alternatives into the market [35]. We can eval-
uate implementability and adoptability by considering
diffusion timescales, learning rates, unit size and cost,
and associated uncertainty.
Technologies following the rapid innovation trajec-
tory tend to be of low complexity and have shorter
lifespans, which can reduce their dependence on the
infrastructure and political systems that are built upon
fossil fuels, thereby escaping carbon lock-in [35]. Car-
bon lock-in is described as “an inertia that helps them
[fossil-fueled energy systems] persist, even as viable
low-carbon alternatives become available” [36]. The
longevity of fossil-fuel infrastructure is a barrier to
clean energy solutions [36], [37], therefore a technolog-
ical solution for climate change should not reinforce
the longevity of that infrastructure. An example of a
renewable energy technology that perpetuates carbon
lock-in is concentrated solar, which currently relies on
natural gas for production back up [38]. Wilson et
al. measure the ability to escape carbon lock-in by
efficiency potential, technical lifetime, and complexity
[35].
C. Social legitimacy, protection, adaptation
Along with being the core of our energy system
technologies, fossil fuels are also a central source of
employment in many regions. Low-carbon technolo-
gies must, therefore, offer similar employment oppor-
tunities [30], [35]. Job creation is a part of gaining social
legitimacy and acceptance, as is equity of access [35].
Equity of access means that improvements to the en-
ergy system lead to improvements in living standards
for all people, especially low-income households which
may not feel the economic benefits of such develop-
ment. The equity of renewable energy technology has
become an increasingly researched topic and a priority
for evaluating climate change mitigation efforts [39]
[40] [41] [42] [43]. Special attention should be paid to
marginalized communities throughout the lifecycle of
a technology, and developers should heed local and
indigenous knowledge [41] [44] [45].
Energy justice, a term for the equitable distribution
of benefits and impacts across society [39], is becom-
ing important as policy makers adopt goals for “just
transitions.” The concept of energy justice implores
developers to consider how much waste a technol-
ogy produces, who bears the burden of that waste
and whether those are the same people who benefit
from the technology. Concepts of energy justice also
raise questions about choice and ownership, and can
lead technology designers to consider how to make
technologies accessible to cooperative or community
ownership. Chapman et al. provide a comprehensive
method of measuring energy justice which considers
elements of distributional, procedural, and recogni-
tional equity [39].
Research on the water-energy-food nexus highlights
the need for energy technologies to protect food and
water resources [46] [47] [48] [49] and foresee how
future changes to those resources might impact the
future of the technology [50] [51]. Equity for individu-
als is inextricable from environmental quality, therefore
the protection of the environment is another essential
requirement for climate change mitigation technologies
[45] [52] [53]. Furthermore, the motivation behind ad-
dressing climate change in the first place is, broadly, to
protect humans and nonhuman ecosystems from the
detrimental impacts of the changing cycles and pat-
terns. It would be counterproductive for our mitigative
solutions to threaten those very ecosystems. Beier et al.
emphasize the need to ensure that as climate change
leads to altered animal migration patterns, we are pro-
tecting the essential corridors along which they travel
[53]. Mclaughlin points out that when a technology is
perceived as “one with mother nature,” it is more likely
to be accepted by communities [54].
When we approach individual technologies as parts
of larger economic, social, and energy systems, we
can value their ability to enable other technologies or
practices that help ecosystems mitigate or adapt to
climate change. The most common example of this is
electric grid or energy storage technologies that can
enable increases in renewable energy generation on the
grid. Measuring ecosystem benefits and the capacity
to enable other technologies may require forms of
scenario analysis.
Renewable energy solutions that meet the latter six
criteria are not only better able to address climate
change directly, but they also have the potential to
address the social, cultural, economic, and systematic
barriers that stand in the way of renewable energy
development today. Some of these requirements are
easy to measure, but others pose evaluative challenges.
Improving the requirements and evaluation techniques
and considering all requirements together as measures
of a renewable energy technology’s suitability for ad-
dressing the climate emergency is a topic for future
research.
D. Alternative Frames
In Seciton III, we argue that the Intrinsic Solution
Frame contributes to the limited criteria by which
we measure success of marine energy with respect to
climate change. We might infer, then, that building new
frames will enable us to adopt some of the climate crite-
ria discussed above. Yet, to construct those new frames,
we must, as a field, cultivate an understanding of those
criteria, privileging climate change-related knowledge
other than that of emissions.
We can understand the relationship between cli-
mate change and marine energy though the frame of
our changing oceans, the needs of frontline commu-
nities, the environmental impacts of climate change,
our changing electric grids and markets, democracy,
justice, equity, resilience, and even, were one to do a
careful examination, decolonial practice. Any one of
these ways of understanding the relationship between
TRUEWORTHY et al.: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN MARINE RENEWABLE ENERGY 7
climate change and marine energy could present new
opportunities in the field.
We have already begun to see examples of the poten-
tial of new frames in marine renewable energy fields.
Researchers have suggested to possibility of using
marine energy for ocean clean-up and observation [5],
the benefits of marine renewable energy for remote
communities [25], and the potential to combine wave
energy with other renewables to decrease overall vari-
ability [55]. Researchers at the intersections of policy,
economics, and renewable energy have examined the
ways in which renewable energy projects can align
with or support alternative economic and social prior-
ities [56]. The research done in these areas can provide
us with facts which serve to activate new frames by
which we can associate climate change and marine
renewable energy. This is only possible if we construct
those frames through careful communication [15]. As
Lakoff notes, ”In the case of global warming, all too
many people do not have such a system of frames
in the conceptual systems in their brains. Such frame
systems have to be built over time” [15]. Buildings
these systems of frames takes far more work than can
be presented in a single conference paper, but in Figure
2 we visualize some of the possibilities.
There are significant bodies of work from the social
sciences and humanities relating democracy, justice,
equity, and decolonial practice to energy. That work is
regularly employed by policy makers and activists, but
scholars are beginning to understand how it might be
used in technological research and design to improve
outcomes i.e. [57].
Within the sub-field of energy communication,
Cozen et al. call for better engagement with ”everyday
social struggles over energy, dissent against patterned
thoughts and deep-seated assumptions about what
energy is and does for society, and the composition
of alternative possibilities for living in the world as
it intersects with energy resources, production, and
consumption” [58]. A similar engagement from the
renewable energy fields, including marine renewable
energy, will help us make our work relevant to the
wider conversation about energy transitions.
E. Design Approaches
The opportunities we have discussed thus far relate
to the ways that we measure success of marine energy
technologies, with the understanding that measures of
success drive the design process. We will finish with
a brief discussion of design approaches which could
enable improved outcomes under climate criteria.
Community-driven design, ecological engineering
principles, design for X (environment, sustainability),
and whole systems design are all approaches which we
have discussed previously with reference to wave en-
ergy design [22]. Some properties of these approaches
which contrast the dominant iterative and systems
engineering approaches currently employed in WEC
design include the level of engagement with coastal
community members, the required knowledge of the
surrounding ecosystem, the value of site-specific de-
sign decisions, the means of evaluating early design
concepts, the method of selecting of materials, and the
defining characteristics of survivablity and resilience.
Employing such approaches may lead to new concepts
for marine renewable energy.
Climate change will not only bring environmental
changes, it will bring economic, political, social, cul-
tural, infrastructure, and systematic changes, some of
which we can predict, and some of which we cannot.
This demands that designers of many technological
systems, renewable energy especially, begin to employ
design methods that help them prepare for and re-
spond to those changes. For WEC designers, this means
designing for future electricity infrastructure and mar-
kets, considering the changing needs of specific coastal
communities, and designing with an awareness of the
many stressors on the ocean environment.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we shows how marine energy re-
searchers construct the relationship between marine
energy and climate change. We discuss how that
communicated relationship is reflected in the work
of marine energy scholars and what limitations it
presents. The relationship between climate change and
marine renewable energy as we commonly produce
it, dominated by emissions-related knowledge of cli-
mate change, is a narrow conceptualized relationship
which impedes our ability to effectively address cli-
mate change through work in marine energy. By culti-
vating a broader understanding of climate change and
building frames which facilitate that understanding,
we may find new opportunities for addressing climate
change with marine renewable energy technologies.
8
Climate
change Emissions
Changing
Oceans
Frontline
Communities
Electricity
Infrastructure
Justice Democracy/
Engagement
Equity/
Access Decolonial
Practice
Environmental
Restoration
Food and
Water
Scarcity
Renewable
Energy
Marine
Renewable
Energy
Advocacy/
Social
Movements
Extreme
Weather
Environmental
degradation
Farming
Biodiversity
Fig. 2. A web of relationships surrounding climate change and marine energy. The relationship which is commonly produced in marine
renewable energy scholarship is shown in bold. The dashed lines indicate relationships that should be further explored.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank you to J. Hamblin for concept and first draft
feedback and D.T. Gaebele for help with text searches.
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