Abstract
This report is the 2016 edition of the Joint Research Centre's ocean energy status report. While the 2014 edition gave an overview of the ocean sector in the European Union, including technology descriptions, this second version focuses more on the developments that have taken place in the sector over the past years in terms of technological progress, market creation, and policy instruments available at European and national level. The various ocean energy technologies (tidal energy, wave energy, ocean thermal energy conversion and salinity gradient energy) are at different stages of technical and commercial development. In Europe, tidal and wave energy are those poised to provide the most significant contribution to the European energy system in the short term.