**4. Conclusions**

The economic assessment of wave energy projects is highly recommended at any stage of development. Setting target LCoE goals for a specific market is paramount to understand the key values that shall be achieved in order to be competitive in that specific market. The concepts to be evaluated in the LiftWEC project are at a very early stage of development. Nevertheless, as the target is to deliver electricity to the grid at a competitive price, some key economic indicators can be used to facilitate achieving the end goal. The present work has defined estimate values for overall project interest rate, capacity factor, WEC availability, CAPEX and OPEX when a specific LCoE is set as a target. The estimates have shown to be aligned with the targets of the wave energy sector and provide reasonable orders of magnitude for the different elements that constitute a wave energy converter. The uncertainty associated with these estimates has also been discussed. With an extensive database of costs, the estimated values enable to define ranges of costs for all cost centres of a WEC project. By keeping these in mind throughout the design process, it is the aim to ensure that the development of a WEC concept is following a competitive pathway to commercialisation.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, A.T. and J.F.C.; methodology, A.T. and J.F.C.; formal analysis, A.T. and J.F.C.; writing—original draft preparation, A.T. and J.F.C.; writing—review and editing, A.T. and J.F.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 851885.

**Acknowledgments:** This paper is supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 851885, project LiftWEC (the development of a novel wave energy converter based on hydrodynamic lift forces). The authors would also like to acknowledge the fruitful discussions and comments from the LiftWEC project participants, especially Matt Foley and Paul Lamont-Kane (Queens University Belfast).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
