Abstract
Very few amounts of Life cycle assessments (LCA) are conducted for ocean wave energy converters (WEC). Among those, no work can be found regarding the oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter devices. This study presents a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment for the LIMPET OWC plant. The study aims to identify the impact of the LIMPET plant. OpenLCA software was used to perform the LCA. ReCiPe 2016 and EDIP 2003 methods were used to assess the impact of the use of the Ecoinvent database. The carbon payback period and the energy payback period of the LIMPET plant were 0.14 and 161.15 years respectively. The energy payback period is very high due to inefficient energy harnessing and plant failures.