It is known that the OTEC applications require warm surface sea water with a constant temperature and therefore are limited to the tropical and subtropical oceans. Being located in the temperature zone, European countries/industries can not benefit directly from the OTEC development, but they feel that they can participate in the development and benefit from the market opportunities created through the application of OTEC/DOWA technologies. For this reason, considerable amount of development works has been done over the past 20 years within the EUROCEAN, as a joint effort by European companies covering all the technologies needed to finally develop and build any kind of plant utilizing deep ocean water. So far, European's development works on OTEC/DOWA have been performed by companies from 8 different countries including Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. More recently in the 80's, many project orientated works were performed by individual companies or groups of companies. Some of the major projects they conducted are listed below:
| Project | Companies |
| Pre-study on OTEC/Desalination/Aquaculture on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. |
Alfa-Laval, RA-Shipping, SWECO |
| Pre-design of Desalination Plant, 1,000 m3 per day, including extensive site investigations on Bonaire, Dutch Antilles. |
Alfa-Laval, |
| Pre-study for 5 MW OTEC in Tahiti. |
IFREMER |
| Pre-design for 100 kw OTEC in Bali, including site investigation and temperature recordings. |
HBG(Hollandsche Beton Group NV) |
| Heat exchanger supply to the 50 kw Demonstration Plant Mini-OTEC, Hawaii. |
Alfa-Laval |
| Pre-design of OTEC/Desalination Plant, 300 kw electricity/10m3 per day, Hawaii. |
GEC |