**1. Introduction**

The ocean is an abundant resource for island countries, and can be used as a source of energy in areas where natural resources are limited. The Pacific Island countries have a history of relying on importing diesel for energy purposes, which not only causes environmental concerns but also social and economic concerns. Diesel-based electricity in these countries is often associated with fluctuating prices and high electricity tariffs. Harnessing energy from the ocean is one of the alternatives to establishing energy security and strengthening resilient development, and includes wave energy, ocean current energy, tidal energy, and ocean thermal energy. There is limited literature available on resource assessment for currents, tidal, and thermal energy for the Pacific Ocean; however, there are recent studies on wave energy that show several potential sites within selected Pacific Island countries.

When it comes to wave energy in the Pacific Islands, so far two main studies have assessed and quantified the resource in different locations. The variables analyzed, data

**Citation:** Borges Posterari, J.; Waseda, T. Wave Energy in the Pacific Island Countries: A New Integrative Conceptual Framework for Potential Challenges in Harnessing Wave Energy. *Energies* **2022**, *15*, 2606. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15072606

Academic Editors: Eugen Rusu, Kostas Belibassakis, George Lavidas and Peter V. Schaeffer

Received: 18 October 2021 Accepted: 29 March 2022 Published: 2 April 2022

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source, and methods used were distinct for both studies, nonetheless, they have shown that wave energy is a possibility for different locations inside the Pacific. In 1996, a study by Barstow and Falnes [1], using buoy measurements and GEOSAT satellite altimeter observations, analyzed the wave climate and wave energy resource for seven PICs (Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Kiribati). They also included a state of the art review of wave energy technologies, environmental and political considerations, demography data, and energy needs in the selected countries.

The last study on this field was conducted in 2015, by Bosserelle et al. [2], and expanded the domain for wave energy resource assessment and analyzed 33 islands from 12 different countries. This assessment was carried out using the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) wave hindcast, containing data from 1979 to 2010 with a resolution of 7 km around the Pacific Islands. This hindcast was validated by measurements from Pacific buoys and used to calculate wave statistics for the Pacific domain (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Average wave power in the Pacific (kW/m): reproduced from [2], Waves and Coasts in the Pacific, published by Pacific Community (SPC) 2015.

The South Pacific area shows significant potential for the deployment of wave energy converters based on the resource analysis and could be further explored to meet the renewable energy goals of the Pacific countries. Nevertheless, characterizing the resource itself does not provide enough information on the suitability of potential sites or the feasibility of wave energy at a specific location. As part of the site screening stage of a wave energy project, it is required to identify any potential challenges that could hinder the feasibility of installing and operating a wave energy converter. The project development process should assess the available data and their suitability to inform the initial feasibility of the project. Any data gaps and their relevance should be highlighted to identify, define, and prioritize the requirements for further and more detailed surveys [3]. This is done through a pre-feasibility study, which includes a preliminary resource assessment, as well as an overview of any potential obstacles for a project.

The nature of these obstacles can vary and, so far, there has been no predefined guideline on how to identify them. Combining all relevant information without a defined structure is a challenge since wave energy has direct and indirect relationships with different fields. Even though there is a lack of structured frameworks for the proposed scope, there is a significant amount of literature on different stages of a wave energy

project, such as environmental impact assessment (EIA). An example would be the study by Mendonza et al. [4] that proposed a framework for environmental impacts on ocean energy devices, suggesting interactions between devices and the environment that should be considered for different devices. Their study mostly focused on the environmental dimension, which is in accordance with EIAs, while the present study focuses on the six PESTEL dimensions.

It is essential to gather pertinent information in the early stages of a project to increase the chances of success, especially in a new environment where wave energy has not been previously introduced. Two traditional concepts from the marketing and business fields that could be adapted to wave energy pre-feasibility studies are PESTEL and SWOT. These are two well-established decision- making tools that can structure information from a holistic perspective and assess unknown variables; however, there is limited literature on how to adapt them into the marine energy field. In this study we demonstrated how PESTEL and SWOT approaches can assist ocean wave energy projects in the Pacific to move forward. This has never been discussed in the literature and the presented framework can also be adapted to tidal, current, and thermal energy technologies in other regions.
