Origins

The Atlas of UK Marine Renewables Energy Resources was first published in September 2004 under funding from the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) programme for Offshore Energy.

The Atlas was updated in 2007 to ensure that the most reliable data sources were recognised in the definition of primary resource parameters for waves, winds and tides and to enable greater access to datasets through a free to use online web-GIS service.

Other data

We retain an in-house development programme to extend the information made available through the Atlas and actively monitor uptake across the industry.

We have also developed a set of unique exploration tools to complement the resource maps to enable a greater level of understanding at site selection.

Since going online we have added tidal ellipses and the outputs from a Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters wave and tidal model we created for The Crown Estate.

The Atlas continues to attract great interest across the industry and still remains the most recognised source of freely available information of detailed regional descriptions of potential marine energy resources in UK waters.