Jul 08 2010

Wave Power: A Trillion Dollar Market?

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Market researchers are great synthesizers, but sometimes you have to take their claims with a few grains of salt. A perfect case in point is a recent report by Frost & Sullivan, which declares that “the market potential for the wave (power) industry is about $1 trillion worldwide.” 

Given that the current size of the commercial wave industry is roughly zero dollars, that’s a bold estimate to say the least. It appears to be based not on commercial realities, but on an extrapolation of the physical energy potentially extractable from the world’s oceans, which the report summary estimates at up to 6 million gigawatt-hours per year. (That's about equal to the energy in all the oil consumed worldwide in 2006.) 

Frost & Sullivan’s news release goes on to say, with breaktaking confidence, that “ocean (wave and tidal) technology is much more reliable and predictable than other kinds of renewable energies, such as wind or solar. Coupled with vast worldwide resources . . .  ocean energy may be the key to answer the world's escalating energy needs.”

More reliable than wind or solar? Hardly. As the news release admits farther down, “The extremely harsh weather conditions of the ocean require the technology to be very robust. Pelamis Wave Power has halted its 2.5 MW wave farm in Portugal indefinitely. The reason cited for this is water leakage, which has severely affected their buoyancy device.”

Or consider this news item from GreenTechMedia last month: 

 

The prospect of extracting nearly unlimited renewable energy from the tides suffered a blow this month when OpenHydro announced it would pull its experimental underwater turbine from the Bay of Fundy. . . . Last week, the Irish company said it would yank the turbine out by October after an underwater video discovered two broken blades. . . . The setback underscores how difficult it is to operate in the corrosive, storm-plagued marine environment. The $10 million, 1 MW project had hoped to show that a first-of-its-kind tidal plant could be built to supply as much as 25 percent of Nova Scotia's electricity.

 

When I queried the Frost & Sullivan analyst by email, it turned out that what he really meant was that ocean energy, not technology, is more reliably available than wind or solar energy. That’s a rather big difference.

 

Fortunately, the ocean power industry is making progress despite inevitable setbacks. As noted in NEXT100, PG&E is promoting pilot testing of new technology off the California coast through its WaveConnect™ program. And in Scotland, the government has just awarded millions of dollars in funding to five wave and tidal energy demonstration projects. The industry is also being supported by the European Marine Energy Research Centre.

 

As the Frost & Sullivan study rightly notes, in contrast to its optimistic flights of rhetoric, “The future of wave and tidal energy depends heavily on financial funding from public, private, and government entities. Deployment of wave and tidal technology will not be easily achievable due to large initial installation cost.” And even once the technology is proven, challenges will remain of moving to the next phase of commercialization.

 

All that said, unlocking the power of ocean waves and tides is a goal well worth pursuing. The energy potential is staggering and the resource lies near population centers that need it. Above all, ocean power is clean and renewable. So let’s go for it—with determination, not hype.

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