No abstract

NOTICEThis report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or any agency thereof. Executive SummaryThe National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) routinely estimates the technical potential of specific renewable electricity generation technologies. These are technologyspecific estimates of energy generation potential based on renewable resource availability and quality, technical system performance, topographic limitations, environmental, and land-use constraints only. The estimates do not consider (in most cases) economic or market constraints, and therefore do not represent a level of renewable generation that might actually be deployed.This report is unique in unifying assumptions and application of methods employed to generate comparable estimates across technologies, where possible, to allow crosstechnology comparison. Technical potential estimates for six different renewable energy technologies were calculated by NREL, and methods and results for several other renewable technologies from previously published reports are also presented. The report first describes the methodology and assumptions for estimating the technical potential of each technology, and then briefly describes the resulting estimates. The results discussion includes state-level maps and tables containing available land area (square kilometers), installed capacity (gigawatts), and electric generation (gigawatthours) for each technology.

This report, the 2016 Offshore Wind Energy Resource Assessment for the United States, was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and updates a previous national resource assessment study (Schwartz et al. 2010), and refines and reaffirms that the available wind resource is sufficient for offshore wind to be a large-scale contributor to the nation's electric energy supply. Experience from other renewable technologies, such as landbased wind and solar energy, indicates that offshore wind site development will likely be highly selective. Therefore, the resource potential needs to significantly exceed the anticipated deployment to allow for siting flexibility. When developers and regulators have more siting options, projects can be built in the most economical and least conflicted areas. Therefore, an abundant wind resource is one of the essential building blocks that compose the value proposition for offshore wind. As such, the study shows that to implement the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Wind Vision 86-gigawatt (GW) offshore wind deployment scenario for 2050 (DOE 2015a), it would require the United States to use about 0.8% of the gross resource area or about 4.2% of the total technical resource area.

NOTICEThis report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or any agency thereof. Executive SummaryThe National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) routinely estimates the technical potential of specific renewable electricity generation technologies. These are technologyspecific estimates of energy generation potential based on renewable resource availability and quality, technical system performance, topographic limitations, environmental, and land-use constraints only. The estimates do not consider (in most cases) economic or market constraints, and therefore do not represent a level of renewable generation that might actually be deployed.This report is unique in unifying assumptions and application of methods employed to generate comparable estimates across technologies, where possible, to allow crosstechnology comparison. Technical potential estimates for six different renewable energy technologies were calculated by NREL, and methods and results for several other renewable technologies from previously published reports are also presented. The report first describes the methodology and assumptions for estimating the technical potential of each technology, and then briefly describes the resulting estimates. The results discussion includes state-level maps and tables containing available land area (square kilometers), installed capacity (gigawatts), and electric generation (gigawatthours) for each technology.

No abstract