Gérard C. Nihous, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai‘i Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) relies on the thermal stratification of the water column in tropical oceans to drive a heat engine. OTEC technologies require large seawater flow rates since temperature differences from different water depths are relatively small. This raises a number of questions, for example, whether global OTEC resources are limited, and what large-scale environmental effects might occur. Attempts to address such issues, for more than a decade, are summarized, from one-dimensional analyses of the