Development Trend and Technical Challenges of Ocean Engineering

The ocean, the cradle of life and the treasure house of resources, is strategically important to connect the world and promote high-quality development. Ocean engineering is an essential subject and key support for sustainable exploration and utilization of the ocean resources. Driven by policies such as the marine power, peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality, research studies on China’s ocean engineering have played a pivotal role in supporting the global development landscape and have required addressing tremendous development opportunities and technical challenges. Taking into account the above situations, the global development trend, status and limitations of China’s ocean engineering have been reviewed in this paper. To maximize the utilization of ocean resources, new situations, latest trends and development opportunities have been also analyzed in the key areas, which include offshore oil and gas, offshore wind power, offshore photovoltaic, seabed mining and marine aquaculture engineering. Meanwhile, the key scientific problems such as technical challenges, bottleneck issues and the breakthrough directions, have been discussed with details. Finally, this study has provided invaluable suggestions on the development of ocean engineering and the realization of building China into a strong maritime country in the future.