Welcome to the Atlas of UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources
- Tidal excursion ellipses (Mean tide)
- Annual % exceedance 2m/s tidal layer
Background
A project commissioned by BERR in 2007 has taken the existing UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources Atlas forward. This new stage of development for the Atlas has enabled an enhanced definition of the primary resource variables and is now a product that is being made more accessible though a webGIS interface. The charts in the Atlas indicate the distribution of potential resource for the future deployment of renewable energy technologies – wind, wave and tidal. The project team was led by ABP Marine Environmental Research and included the providers of major marine data holdings (Met Office and Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL)).
The Atlas represents the most detailed regional description of potential marine energy resources in UK waters ever completed to date at a national scale, and will be used to help guide policy and planning decisions for future site leasing rounds.
The study was completed as part BERR's Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) process for offshore energy. The SEA process is funded in full by BERR and more information can be found at www.offshore-sea.org.uk/.
Obtaining a copy
The Atlas is now available in several formats on this website (more about the website):
- webGIS Application (view envisaged work flow) - requires JavaScript to be enabled;
- Tide resource
- Wave resource
- Wind resource
- Downloadable GIS layers (.shp and .tab formats) (view the data licence agreement); and
- presented as two downloadable PDF documents:
- Atlas of marine renewable energy resources (PDF 4.51MB). This is a scaled down digital version of the full colour A3 book, designed for download, with a complete range of output charts from the atlas database. It includes charts of all of the parameters studied in the atlas project.
- Atlas technical report (PDF 10.8MB). This is an A4 document explaining how the atlas was created, explains the parameters in full and discusses all of the Atlas deliverables.
Disclaimer
Whilst every care has been taken in developing and compiling the data on this website, the project team (ABPmer, POL and Met Office) accept no liability for any loss or damage arising directly or indirectly in connection with reliance on its contents.