California Coast & Ocean

The first wave energy system to provide energy to a national grid was the onshore Limpet (Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer), developed by the Scottish company Wavegen and installed on the island of Islay. It captures wave energy by means of an oscillating water column: as waves flow into the column, a chamber with its bottom open to the sea, they force air through turbines, which in turn power a generator. A turbine tested there from 2000 to 2007 was capable of generating up to 500 kilowatts, enough to power 280 U.K. homes, which consume on average about 4,700 kilowatt hours annually. Now the company is testing two new turbines, with generating capacities of 100 kilowatts and 20 kilowatts.

Other promising technologies include buoys whose bobbing motions drive generators, and a system called the Wave Dragon, developed by a Danish company of the same name, which directs waves up a ramp and into a reservoir, where it is released through turbines that convert it into power. On the U.S. West Coast, buoy systems predominate among those being studied. In 2007, FERC granted a license to Finavera Renewables, a firm based in Vancouver, Canada, for a demonstration project that will place four buoys in the waters off Makah Bay, near Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The project is expected to generate up to one one megawatt of electricity, enough to power 150 homes in nearby Neah Bay. (In 2006, average U.S. household electricity consumption was 11,040 kilowatt hours, and in Washington State it was 12,732.) New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies has also developed a buoy system that it has tested off Hawaii and Spain, and is among the companies planning projects off Oregon and California.

The greatest potential for wave power generation lies in regions with strong prevailing westerly winds, especially continental Europe's western seaboard, the United Kingdom's northern coast, and the Pacific coasts of Australia and North and South America. The Oregon coast is well suited to wave power development, as is California's coast north of Point Arena, according to EPRI.

Where coasts lack the conditions needed for wave-generated energy, other types of ocean energy generators are being explored. "Tidal energy in France is about as well developed as wave energy in Scotland and offshore wind energy in the Netherlands," said Rod Fujita, a scientist with the Oceans Program of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The United States has been lagging, taking baby steps, he said.

Who's In Charge?
One major obstacle to developing ocean energy in this country is the lack of clear regulatory authority. FERC, an independent regulatory agency within the Department of Energy, decided in October 2002 that it has the authority to license wave power projects, basing its claim on Part 1 of the Federal Power Act, passed in 1920 to site hydroelectric dams on rivers. Some question whether FERC's authority extends into the ocean, however, and the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior has asserted its own authority over wave power projects on the outer continental shelf, beyond the states' three-mile boundaries.

"One of the things we're faced with is, fundamentally, who's in control?" said Bovett, of Lincoln County, Oregon. "You have the U.S. Department of Energy battling the U.S. Department of the Interior, sending nastygrams to each other. Congress needs to go in and amend the Federal Power Act and clean all this up; right now, there's too much uncertainty all around."