## 1 Introduction  
Without a doubt, conversion of wave energy into electricity represents one of the greatest challenges of the 21 st century. Wave energy is abundant and it has a higher density and predictability than wind or solar energy. Furthermore, there is a wide variety of ways to harness the waves, although the technologies associated with the wave energy conversion are not yet mature enough and none of the existing solutions can be considered now as being the best and the most efficient. Thus, in the struggle against the CO\({}_{2}\) emissions about 100 GW of the ocean energy capacity is expected to be installed by 2050 [1]. From this perspective, ocean energy is expected to play a significant role in the future EU energy system, and by 2050 its potential contribution should cover about 10% of the EU power demand. An important step forward in extracting renewable energy resources in the marine environment is represented by the recent dynamics of the offshore wind industry. Thus, by receiving momentum from the onshore wind, the development of the offshore wind has had a spectacular advance in the last years. The wind is stronger and steadier offshore, and moreover, while the land is almost saturated, in the marine environment there is practically unlimited space to deploy large wind farms. Furthermore,despite some initial difficulties related to the high cost of installation and operating conditions in the harsh marine environment, very high dynamics in increasing the efficiency of the offshore wind can be also noticed. This is measured, especially through the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), which reached a record value of about 7 c/kWh in 2017, or less. Thus, 5.5 c/kWh have been reported at the 700 MW Borssele (The Netherlands) due to government tender and size, and 5c /kWh (without transmission) at the 600 MW Kriegers Flak (Denmark) [2]. This means the offshore wind becomes now not only the cheapest marine renewable energy resource, but it is also cheaper than some traditional resources. For example, the current average LCOE for atomic energy is still about 11 c/kWh, or greater [3]. Various studies [4; 5; 6; 7] showed that the wind energy resources along the coasts of the Black Sea, and especially in its western side, are comparable with those from many offshore wind farms that are already operational [8; 9; 10; 11]. Thus, it is expected that the high dynamics of the offshore wind industry will have as a result also the implementation of some wind farm projects in the nearshore of the Black Sea, in general and in its western side, which is more energetic, in special. Furthermore, most of the studies [12; 13; 14; 15] indicate that the climate change will induce significant enhancements of the wind speed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins. On the other hand, although the potential of wave energy in the Black Sea is not comparable with that from the ocean [16; 17; 18], the expected advances of the WEC (Wave Energy Converters) technologies may make this coastal environment interesting also for the implementation of the marine energy farms, especially as regards the hybrid wind-wave projects. Many coastal areas in the Black Sea are subjected to high erosion processes and the future nearshore farms can play an important role in the coastal protection, because they extract (or dissipate) part of the wave energy before the waves arriving to the shore [19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24]. Furthermore, this is a general problem for many coastal environments and the marine energy farms, besides providing electricity, can become an effective solution in the struggle against the coastal erosion [25; 26; 27]. From this perspective, the present work has as a main objective to assess the most recent wave energy propagation patterns in the western side of the Black Sea. This considers also the fact that there is an obvious dynamics of the wave climate in the Black Sea having as a consequence important changes in the actual patterns of the nearshore wave propagation and inducing significant enhancements of the wave power.