Exploring Effective Supply Chain Readiness and Resilience Within the Marine Renewable Energy Sector: A Future Reality Tree Approach

Marine renewable energy technologies (MRE-T), which capture energy from oceans and seas, represent a pivotal area for sustainable energy development. These technologies, including wave energy converters, tidal energy systems, ocean thermal energy conversion, and salinity gradient power, offer the potential to diversify energy sources, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and mitigate climate change impacts. Despite its vast potential, marine renewable energy currently constitutes only a small fraction of global electricity generation, highlighting the challenges and complexities associated with its development and deployment. This paper builds on original research undertaken in 2019 by the authors exploring the barriers for companies attempting to enter the Marine Renewable Energy-Supply Chain (MRE-SC). The aim of this paper is to adopt the Theory of Constraints (ToC) approach to develop a Future Reality Tree (FRT) which creates a roadmap to enable companies to successfully enter the MRE-SC. This will enable academics and practitioners to visualize the cause-and-effect relationships around market entry into MRE-SCs for companies, whilst outlining the future goals, and the pathways to achieving the desired results within a holistic system. Therefore, the FRT provides a bridge between current and future visions and provides a valuable strategic perspective on the way companies can transition into the MRE-SC, thereby enabling a future state to be described, guiding the identification of changes that are required to establish an effective change management approach.