The innovative (and controversial) UK “wave hub“, in essence a giant plug on the ocean floor, has received approval. The UK government has will install this plug to allow wave power companies to feed energy back into the grid. The £28 million ($56.5 million) project has cleared the last major regulatory hurdle and will begin construction soon.
The project is opposed by surfers who think that it will remove too much energy from the water and hurt wave action. Something that seems unlikely given the massive amount of energy in wave action, and the relatively small amount that is removed for wave energy projects. After passing three environmental impact tests it seems the British government also feels confident of minimal environmental impact.
Wave and tidal power could provide 3 percent of Britain’s electricity by 2020, according to the government-backed Carbon Trust.
The installation is expected to generate up to 20 megawatts of energy, enough to power 7,500 homes and eliminate 300,000 tonnes of CO2 over 25 years. Four companies have already been selected to build projects at the hub.
This sort of minor investment in infrastructure is the kind of thing that governments should be doing to support renewable energy. 56.5 million dollars is what we spend on a couple bombs in Iraq. We could easily find a couple good spots off the cost of the US and throw up a couple wave hubs of our own, this would in turn spark the private sector to develop wave energy devices that use this infrastructure. Similarly we should be investing in transmission lines for wind turbines and solar projects in remote areas.
A minor investment can help spark industry which creates more jobs, and produces more clean renewable energy, which fights global warming, which makes everyone happier.
Minor investment if it is someone else’s money, eh? How many millions (out the door, including the wave tapping devices) need to be spent to power how many homes? How does the cost efficiency compare to say nuclear plants?
I suspect the wave power plant will need (a) stainless steel all over to deal with a harsh environment and (b) lots of upkeep/adjustment/maintenance over the life of the project.
If we spend $80 to get $100 of power, compared to $20 for $100 of power with a nuke plant, are we going astray with wave power?
OK as an experiment, but let’s not go hog-wild yet.
I guess the point I was making is that 56 million is like the interest on how much we owe china in a couple of hours. We could easily spend a couple hundred million dollars on something like this without any trouble.
Yet we waste billions upon billions of dollars in Iraq, blowing people up and getting people killed. The only reason that seems to make any sort of sense is that we are doing it for oil, so I guess factor that cost into the price you pay at the pump and this seems like an even better deal.
I think it is a good adea and like Naib mentioned that much money is a drop in the ocean – no pun intended! But what i think we need to focus on is how we can get large multi national companies to reduce their energy waste and carbon emissions.
What we need to do is actually get the organisations to employ energy saving techniques. If we can do this then we are half way there but at the moment it is still viewed as an avoidable cost.