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The limited supply of fossil fuels, constant rise in the demand of energy and the importance of reducing greenhouse emissions have brought the adoption of renewable energy sources for generation of electrical power. One of these sources that has the potential to supply the world’s energy needs is the ocean. Currently, ocean in West African region is mostly utilized for the extraction of oil and gas from the continental shelf. However, this resource is depleting, and the adaptation of ocean energy could be of major importance. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the possibilities of ocean-based renewable energy (OBRE) and analyze the economic impact of adapting an ocean energy using a thermal gradient (OTEC) approach for energy generation.

The analysis is conducted from the perspective of cost, energy security and environmental protection.

This study shows that adapting ocean energy in the West Africa region can significantly produce the energy needed to match the rising energy demands for sustainable development of Nigeria. Although the transition toward using OBRE will incur high capital cost at the initial stage, eventually, it will lead to a cost-effective generation, transmission, environmental improvement and stable energy supply to match demand when compared with the conventional mode of generation in West Africa.

This study will be helpful in determining the feasibility, performance, issues and environmental effects related to the generation and transmission of OBRE in the West Africa region.

The study will contribute toward analysis of the opportunities for adopting renewable energy sources and increasing energy sustainability for the West Africa coast regions.

Localization is one of the critical issues in Ocean Internet of Things (OITs). The existing research results of localization in OITs are very limited. It poses many challenges due to the difficulty of deploy beacon accurately, the difficulty of transmission distance estimation in harsh ocean environment and the underwater node mobility. This paper aims to provide a novel localization algorithm to solve these problems.

This paper takes the ship with accurate position as a beacon, analyzes the relationship between underwater energy attenuation and node distance and takes them into OITs localization algorithm design. Then, it studies the movement regulation of underwater nodes in the action of ocean current, and designs an Energy-aware Localization Algorithm (ELA) for OITs.

Proposing an ELA. ELA takes the ship with accurate position information as a beacon to solve the problem of beacon deployment. ELA does not need to calculate the information transmission distance which solves the problem of distance estimation. It takes underwater node movement regulation into computation to solve the problem of node mobility.

This paper provides an ELA based on the relationship between propagation energy attenuation and node distance for OITs. It solves the problem of localization in dynamic underwater networks.

This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive literature review in the tidal energy physics, the ocean environment, hydrodynamics of horizontal axis tidal turbines and bio-mimicry.

The paper provides an insight of the tidal turbine blade design and need for renewable energy sources to generate electricity through clean energy sources and less CO₂ emission. The ocean environment, along with hydrodynamic design principles of a horizontal axis tidal turbine blade, is described, including theoretical maximum efficiency, blade element momentum theory and non-dimensional forces acting on tidal turbine blades.

This review gives an overview of fish locomotion identifying the attributes of the swimming like lift-based thrust propulsion, the locomotion driving factors: dorsal fins, caudal fins in propulsion, which enable the fish to be efficient even at low tidal velocities.

Finally, after understanding the phenomenon of caudal fin propulsion and its relationship with tidal turbine blade hydrodynamics, this review focuses on the implications of bio-mimicking a curved caudal fin to design an efficient horizontal axis tidal turbine.

The Pacific Island countries are culturally diverse, politically challenging, extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural disaster impacts, and financially heavily dependent on aid flows. This chapter examines barriers and opportunities for Green growth (GG) to flourish in a country with a practically non-existent real economy and which is currently under the threat of disappearance under water. It draws on a visiting experience and lessons from the literature and tries to investigate the role of innovation and entrepreneurship as poles of re-birth and local creativity. More particularly, I here discuss why a least developed country such as Kiribati might be the perfect location for dynamics of GG to get born and how, Kiribati, a country under threat and fear, can be transformed into a lighthouse of entrepreneurship which can give boost to the implementation of one of the most advanced energy technologies in the world. I also discuss how, ultimately, a “least developed economy” can secure scientific lessons, which are highly significant for the international knowledge society.

Since 2000, China, along with the USA, UK, France, Japan and many other developed countries have drawn up new blueprints for the development of a marine economy. At present, international marine economics research has entered into a new period of development, and the research methods of ocean econometrics are becoming more complex and mature. The purpose of this paper is to review the progress of international marine econometrics research and gives the development direction of marine econometrics.

The Web of Science core collection database was utilized, harvesting data from 1996 to May 2018, measuring the marine economy research from 1,489 articles as its sample, using CiteSpace visualization analysis tools.

Mapping the knowledge map from annual international marine economic metrology, literature identification, keywords, involving disciplines and related journals, countries (regions) and research and analyzing the research status of reveals the research frontiers of international marine economy measurement (learning) by using CiteSpace.

The conceptions and characteristics of marine econometrics are defined and analyzed, and the theoretical method of marine econometrics is sorted out. Mapping the knowledge diagram of marine econometrics and discussing the research status of international marine economics, and clarifying the existing problems, future opportunities and challenges of international marine econometrics research.

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the lessons learned from the successful deployment of a wave energy converter (WEC) and accelerate growth in the field of ocean energy.

A thorough, well structured, documented, industrial approach was taken to the deployment because of the depth and scale of the task required. This approach is shown throughout the paper, which reflects the importance of a comprehensive project plan in success as well as failure.

The findings demonstrate the viability of the use of off shore WEC to generate electricity and that such a project can be completed on time and on budget.

The research implications of the paper include the importance of an enhanced, integrated supervisory system control in terms of efficiency, operation and maintenance, and long-term viability of WECs. This paper can be used to help guide the direction of further research in similar areas.

The practical implications include proof that WEC deployments can be carried out both on time and under budget. It highlights much of the practical data collected throughout the course of the project and presents it so that it might be used as a guide for future projects.

At the time of this paper, successful deployment of off shore WECs has been a rare accomplishment. Because the project was publicly funded, the data collected during this project, both technical and practical, is freely available.

The purpose of this study is to provide a foundational understanding of the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the context of renewable energy markets. The focus is on exploring and identifying the managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to their international expansion, which also furthers the understanding of the distinct SME’s internationalization context within the renewable energy market.

The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach in a Finnish SME context and identifies the antecedents’ relative prominence at the managerial, firm and environmental levels.

The findings indicate that, although internationalization antecedents of renewable energy SMEs differ owing to market forces such as trends, networks and changing regulatory policies, they share antecedents similar to those of SMEs in other industries.

The main limitation of this study is its single-country home market empirical context. Future studies should expand analysis to different regulatory and regional environments.

To the authors’ knowledge, there are few studies that explore the antecedents of SMEs’ internationalization, especially in the renewable energy market context. Hence, this study contributes to the international business and entrepreneurship literature by illustrating the fundamental managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to the internationalization of SMEs operating in the renewable energy business. In addition, it highlights the peculiarities of renewable energy SMEs’ internationalization, suggesting that extant research on SMEs’ internationalization has not adequately captured the intricacies present in the internationalization of renewable energy enterprises.

Energy consumption in transportation accounted for over 29% of total final consumption (TFC) of energy and 65% of global oil usage, and it is highly connected to mobility. Mobility is essential for access to day-to-day activities such as education, leisure, healthcare, business activities, and commercial and industrial operations. This study examines the energy consumption for the transport industry, and the level of renewable energy development in some selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations. This study relied on previous publications of government, reports and articles related to the subject matter. Vehicle ownership is fast increasing, particularly in cities. Still, it begins at a relatively low level because the area is home to countries with the lowest ownership rates worldwide. In its current state, the energy sector faces significant challenges such as inadequate and poorly maintained infrastructure, dealing with increasing traffic congestion in cities, large-scale imports of used vehicles with poor emission standards that affect air quality in cities, a lack of safe and formally operated public transportation systems, and inadequate consideration for women and disabled mobility needs. Motorcycle and tricycle are dominating the rural areas, accounting for a substantial amount of this growth. Aviation is the largest non-road user of energy, and this trend is predicted to continue through 2040 as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows and urbanisation expands. This study revealed the energy consumption for the transport industry, and the level of renewable energy development in some selected SSA. Rail and navigation lag behind current global levels. The usage of biofuel and rail transport was recommended.

Because of the shortage of energy, the development of green and reliable energy is particularly important. As a green and clean energy, wind power is widely used. As the core component of wind power generation, it is particularly important to choose generators with high reliability. Switched reluctance machine is widely used as generators because of its strong fault tolerance and high reliability. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a power converter and its control strategy to improve the efficiency of switched reluctance generators.

In this paper, a full-bridge power converter (FBPC) instead of the asymmetric half-bridge power converter (AHBPC) is adopted to drive the switched reluctance generator (SRG) system. Compare the FBPC with the AHBPC, the FBPC has several advantages including low cost and modularization, and operation process of SRG winding current direction is variable.

The results show that the SRG system can keep smooth operation by the FBPC with relatively high efficiency.

The FBPC is suitable to drive the SRG system. Meanwhile, this paper introduces two excitation modes of the FBPC as three-phase three-beat mode and six-phase six-beat mode. When the six-phase six-beat control strategy is adopted, the dead band time of the converter can be avoided. At the same time, the SRG has higher efficiency.