![About Us](../../../../../../../energy/assets/gif/title_library.gif)
Energy From the Restless Sea
August 3, 2006 - Heather Timmons - The NY Times
![](600-tides.jpg) |
A turbine being lowered into
the East River for testing in 2004. A $1.5 million
sonar system is planned to monitor effects on
fish populations. |
NEWCASTLE, England — There is more riding the waves
here than surfers, thanks to a growing number of scientists,
engineers and investors.
A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual
motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity
in high demand: energy. Right now, machines of various
shapes and sizes are being tested off shores from
the North Sea to the Pacific — one may even be coming
to the East River in New York State this fall — to
see how they capture waves and tides and create marine
energy.
The industry is still in its infancy, but it is gaining
attention, much because of the persistence of marine
energy inventors, like Dean R. Corren, who have doggedly
lugged their wave and tidal prototypes around the
world, even during the years when money and interest
dried up. Mr. Corren, trim and cerebral, is a scientist
who has long advocated green energy and pushed through
numerous conservation measures when he was chairman
of the public energy utility for the city of Burlington,
Vt.
Another believer in
the technology is Max Carcas, head of business development
for Ocean Power Delivery of Edinburgh. “In the long
run, this could become one of the most competitive
sources of energy,” said Mr. Carcas.
His company manufactures
the Pelamis, a snakelike wave energy machine the size
of a passenger train, which generates energy by absorbing
waves as they undulate on the ocean surface. With
high oil prices, dwindling fuel supplies and a growing
pressure to reduce global warming, governments and
utilities have high hopes for tidal energy. The challenge
now is turning an accumulation of research into a
viable commercial enterprise, which for many years
has proved elusive. No one contends that generating
energy from the oceans is a preposterous idea. After
all, the “fuel” is free and sustainable, and the process
does not generate pollution or emissions. Moreover,
it is not just oceans that could be tapped; the regular
flow of tides in bodies of water linked to oceans,
like the East River, hold promise too. In fact, it
seemed like such a sensible idea that inventors started
making the first wave of such generators centuries
ago. Many operated like dams, trapping water and then
releasing it after the tides fell. But they were outmoded
with the rise of steam engines and other more efficient
fuel sources. Ocean energy had a brief revival when
oil prices rose in the 1970’s, and prototypes were
tested in Europe and China. But financing dried up
when oil prices were low in the 1990’s, and advances
in wind turbines and other renewable energy elbowed
out tidal projects. These days, wave power designs
vary from machines that look like corks bobbing in
the ocean to devices that resemble snakes pointing
into waves. There are shoreline machines that cling,
like limpets, to rocks. Tidal power machines, in contrast,
often come in the form of turbines, which look like
underwater windmills, and generate energy by spinning
as tides move in and out; some inventors also are
testing concrete-and-steel machines that lie on the
seabed and pipe pressurized water back to the shore.
Even big commercial power companies are joining the
action. General Electric; Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian
company; and the Germany power giant Eon have recently
pledged money for new projects or investments in tiny
marine energy companies. “It is an untapped renewable
energy source,” said Mark Huang, senior vice president
for technology finance in General Electric’s media
and communications business, which is financing marine
projects. “There is no where to go but up,” Mr. Huang
said. He added that solar or wind energy should be
viewed “as a case study” for the direction marine
energy could take. Right now, wave power generators
are being tested near the shores of New Jersey, Hawaii,
Scotland, England and Western Australia. A long-awaited
East River tidal turbine project is to start this
fall, and Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat
of Massachusetts, has proposed that the United States
follow in Britain’s footsteps to build an ocean energy
research center, the country’s first, off the Massachusetts
coast. A handful of commercial projects are also in
the works, including the world’s first “wave farm,”
as the fields of machines are known, being installed
off the north coast of Portugal. A field of tidal
turbines is also being built off the shore of Tromso,
Norway. Britain could generate up to 20 percent of
the electricity it needs from waves and tides, according
to an estimate by a government-financed group here
called the Carbon Trust. That is about 12,000 megawatts
a day at current usage, or three times what Britain’s
largest power plant produces now. In fact, England
and Scotland have become experimental laboratories
for ocean energy development. As reserves shrink and
the offshore oil business in the North Sea winds down,
governments are trying to capture the accumulated
knowledge and transform oil industry jobs into other
ways of generating energy. One research center here
in Newcastle is putting marine devices to the test
in a wave pool, and another is deploying them in the
roiling ocean off the Orkneys, the low islands off
northernmost Scotland. The Scottish government has
pledged to generate 18 percent of its energy from
renewable resources by 2010. If marine energy replaces
the burning of some fossil fuels like coal, it can
help reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions and possibly
increase the diversity and security of energy supply,
said John Spurgeon, a marine energy specialist in
the British Department of Trade and Industry. Since
1999, the government has committed more than $47 million
to research and development, $93 million to commercialize
that research and additional money to bring the energy
into the electrical grid, Mr. Spurgeon said. No energy
source is perfect, though, and marine energy developers
are running into some hurdles. While such generators
do not emit smoky pollutants or leave behind radioactive
waste, the machines are not small or delicate, and
can be an eyesore. To draw energy from the ocean,
they often need to be rooted on sea floors relatively
close to shore, or mounted on rocks on the shore —
places that have not traditionally been used for energy
generation. And despite their green-friendly intentions,
inventors are finding some of the stiffest resistance
is coming from environmental groups. Take the case
of Verdant Power, Mr. Corren’s company, which has
been trying for years to erect a small field of tidal
turbines in the East River — a project that may finally
get started this fall. Mr. Corren, the company’s technology
director, first developed the turbines as part of
a New York University project in the 1980’s and planned
to attach them to the Roosevelt Island Bridge. After
the school pulled the plug on the project, the design
team spent years trying to find a new home. One executive
even brought a prototype to Pakistan, but the data
it collected was lost when the computers and instruments
went missing. Verdant embarked on a new East River
turbine project in 2003, but it has taken two and
a half years to get regulatory approval for the project
from environmental agencies and the United States
Army Corp of Engineers. The issue was not blocking
the river to boat traffic, or how it would hook up
to the electrical grid or even how it might mar the
view, because it is mostly underwater. It was the
fish population of the East River. “We had eight fish
biologists against it, and no one on the other side
advocating for clean air” or other environmental issues,
said Ronald F. Smith, the chief executive of Verdant
Power. “You can see that the regulatory process is
extremely biased towards doing nothing,” Mr. Smith
said, adding that regulators were worried about complaints
that could arise from any new projects. To get approval,
the company is installing $1.5 million in underwater
sonar to watch for fish around the turbines “24 hours
a day, 7 days a week,” and the data will be shown
online, Mr. Smith said. Verdant Power executives warn
against looking forward to a live “East River cam”
that broadcasts the murky mysteries beneath the water.
Sonar transmissions look more like fuzzy black and
white television, they say, and besides they have
seen “very, very few fish” on their visits to the
river. Ultimately, Verdant estimates it can generate
10 megawatts of electricity from the East River’s
tidal flows — enough to power several thousand homes,
though its test turbines will be used primarily to
power a Gristedes grocery store on Roosevelt Island.
To date, studies on the effect of wave and tide machines
on marine life have been sporadic and sometimes bizarre.
For example, in one British trial, frozen fish were
shot like projectiles onto a piece of metal that was
supposed to estimate the effects of the turning blades
of marine turbines. Proper testing will involve putting
some of these devices where they are not wanted, a
problem reminiscent of the wind industry’s battle
to construct new turbines. Some leading environmental
advocates say that the issue is part of a larger wrenching
change being thrust on the green movement. “It’s a
major psychological and cultural challenge for the
environmental and conservation movement,” said Stephen
Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK. “What
we need to combat climate change is a complete transformation
of our energy system, and that requires a lot of new
stuff to be built and installed, some of it in places
that are relatively untouched.” But the potential
of marine energy is too strong to ignore. For example,
a recent report identified San Francisco Bay as being
the largest tidal power resource in the continental
United States. “There are tremendous resources for
generating power along the northern coast of California,”
said Uday Mathur, a renewable energy consultant to
government agencies and private enterprises. The biggest
hurdle is creating a landscape for development “where
these technologies can thrive,” he said, which includes
a combination of government involvement, community
support and of course the availability of financing.
“The situation is very similar to wind 15 years ago,”
said John W. Griffiths, a former British gas executive
and founder of JWG Consulting, which advises on renewable
energy projects. He added: “We think that this is
an industry waiting to happen.”
|