Research group

Ocean Energy

Offshore wind turbines producing renewable and green energy

We bring together experts addressing energy challenges from the perspectives of technology, the environment, society, finance, and policy. Our aim is to unlock the potential of ocean renewable energy.

About

The Ocean Energy Special Interest Group (SIG) serves as a hub at the University of Southampton for matters related to the role of seas and oceans in decarbonizing the economy. It also helps achieve net-zero goals worldwide.

Research areas

Our topics of interest are centred around technological, environmental, societal, financial, and policy challenges related to:

  • harvesting of renewable energies (eg offshore wind, wave, freestream tidal energy, tidal barrages and floating solar systems)
  • storage and transformation of offshore energy (eg energy islands, H2 creation)
  • sustainable decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructures

Oceans are pivotal in the world strategy to meet the net-zero objectives, by providing abundant and clean sources of renewable energy. However, the full exploitation of this energy resource faces many challenges of diverse nature. These include the harsh offshore environment, sharing the ocean with many stakeholders, and evolving policy and regulations. Most importantly, it is essential to avoid mistakes of the past and wild industrialisation of our seas and oceans.

Vision and aims

Our vision is to bring together people and skills from across the university and many fields of research to develop transdisciplinary approaches for sustainable ocean energy exploitation. We do this through:

  • fostering research collaboration between faculties and fields of research
  • fostering collaboration with non-academic stakeholders and serving as a contact point for ocean energy matters
  • raising awareness of ocean energy challenges and showcasing how the University of Southampton is working to address these challenges through research, knowledge exchange and other means

Activities

Our events and opportunities are designed in line with the goals we aim to achieve. They include a combination of internal and external activities, such as:

  • themed workshops or lectures bringing together academic and non-academic partners
  • sandpit activities to lay the foundations of interdisciplinary grant application or paper writing
  • invited lectures on case studies from industry
  • development of educational material or media briefings

To find out more about the Ocean Energy Special Interest Group and what we do, get in touch with group champions Dr Yao Zhang, Dr Luke Myers and Dr Benjamin Cerfontaine.

Join the SMMI Community to sign up to this group, and any others of interest to you.

Research highlights

Making offshore carbon storage safe

A team of researchers in Southampton played a key role in a European project to determine the viability of safely and securely storing carbon offshore.

Optimising power transfer for renewable energy

Our researchers are running a series of projects to optimise the design of marine high voltage cables, used in offshore windfarms, to maximise power transfer and save money.

People, projects and publications

People

Dr Gustavo De Almeida

Associate Professor
Connect with Gustavo

Mr Gyanendro Loitongbam PhD

Research Fellow

Research interests

  • the application of Natural Language Processing tasks,
  • multimodal text analysis,
  • sentiment analysis on social media data,

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Gyanendro

Dr Hachem Kassem

Lecturer

Research interests

  • Nearshore hydrodynamics and coastal sediment dynamics
  • Coastal and ocean engineering and flow-structure-seabed-biota interactions
  • Adaptive, nature-inclusive solutions to climate-mediated geohazards, including flooding, erosion and habitat degradation

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Hachem

Dr Hannah Stones

Lecturer

Research interests

  • Maritime Law
  • Remote-Controlled and Autonomous Shipping
  • Passenger Shipping

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Hannah

Miss Hannah Witt

Research interests

  • Deep Sea Mining Law of the SeaCommon Heritage of MankindOcean GovernanceSustainability
Connect with Hannah

Dr Hayward Godwin

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • I have a number of research interests, and they are as follows:
  • - How we search for target(s) in the environment, particularly using visual searches.
  • - Eye movement behaviour, focusing on search tasks
Connect with Hayward

Dr Hector Marin Moreno

Lecturer in Climate Sciences

Research interests

  • Smart and cost-effective solutions for joint processing and interpretation of geophysical and geotechnical data from renewable energy developments offshore
  • Geological storage of CO2 and hydrogen 
  • Climate and human-induced methane emissions in the marine environment 

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Hector

Dr Helen Farr

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • Seafaring
  • Submerged Palaeo Landscapes
  • Maritime Heritage

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Helen

Dr Helen Paul MA(Oxon), MLitt, PhD, FRHistS, FRSA

Lecturer

Research interests

  • Economic History
  • Social History
  • Business History

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Helen

Related research institutes, centres and groups

Related research institutes, centres and groups

Connect with us

Enquiries

If you're interested in joining us or collaborating, get in touch with the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute.