California Coast & Ocean

People have dreamed for centuries of tapping the immense power of moving ocean water to generate electricity, and now it is beginning to happen. In Europe, two experimental wave energy projects are already feeding electricity into their nations' grids. A small facility off the coast of Scotland has been operating for more than seven years, and the world's first commercial wave farm, off the coast of Portugal, began operations in September.

Experimental systems are in various stages of development in many countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Australia, Canada, and Japan. In the United States, pilot plants are being planned in Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California. Amid rising concern about climate change and the future of fossil fuels, the promise of endlessly renewable, emissions-free electricity is increasingly attractive.

Ocean waves generate an enormous amount of energy, and wave power may be more reliable than solar or wind energy; it also does not carry the negative side-effects of biofuels now being promoted. But the challenge of converting the waves' power to energy humans can use is also enormous, both technologically--the machines must be able to survive extreme conditions with minimumal maintenance--and socially, due to potential conflicts with other ocean values and uses.

The first (and so far only) study to evaluate the U.S. potential for ocean wave power development was conducted in 2004 by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, a nonprofit think tank created by the utilities some 30 years ago to undertake scientific and technological research supporting the utilities industry. In a report released in 2007, EPRI estimated that the potential for wave power generation in the United States is up to 6.5 percent of current electrical consumption, the same as all conventional hydropower. In this state, the California Energy Commission released a report in 2008 estimating that wave power could potentially supply up to seven or eight gigawatts of energy, about one quarter of the total used statewide in 2006. Due to the many constraints, however, much less is likely to be developed.

If wave power proves successful, however, and large-scale projects are developed, conservationists warn that their cumulative impacts on ocean processes, marine life, and human uses of the waves will need to be taken into account.

Getting First Dibs
In 2006 and 2007, a kind of wave power "gold rush" hit the West Coast of the United States, especially northern California and Oregon. Technology companies, local governments, and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) raced to stake claims with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for areas offshore at sites that are believed to have the best potential for developing wave power projects. Between March 2006 and February 2007, FERC received applications for more than 40 preliminary permits for projects on the West Coast. To date, it has granted permits to seven applicants for five sites in Oregon and four in California--three in Humboldt County, one in Mendocino County.

A hydrokinetic preliminary permit from FERC grants a company priority over a specified area for up to three years, to study the feasibility of developing a wave power project there. It also grants the holder first preference for the longterm FERC license needed to begin constructing a facility. Companies that did not act quickly once the rush began risked being locked out of prime wave power areas for 30 to 50 years, the time period for which FERC licenses are issued.

"FERC's permits are granted on the basis of ‘first in time, first right,' kind of like mining claims," said Rob Bovett, an attorney with Oregon's Lincoln County. "So you had this kind of feeding frenzy up and down the coast, with people drawing boxes in the ocean."

"We want people to come to us beforehand and ask us where to site these things," Bovett said. "We want to comprehensively plan for this stuff." The County filed an application with FERC for the waters off its coast in 2006, but FERC turned it down, on the ground that the County asked for too broad an area. In California, Sonoma County also applied for a preliminary permit for its coastal waters, and was also denied, but Douglas and Tillamook Counties in Oregon were granted permits for some of their waters.

Because some of the most promising sites for wave power installations are also the best areas for fishing, this rush to claim territory raised an outcry, especially from fishermen who were alarmed by the speed with which the permits were granted and feared that they would be excluded from fishing grounds.

"People don't know where or when they'll be able to weigh in," said Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith, who is also a commercial fisherman. "What we've asked is for them [FERC] to slow down." In California as in Oregon, local governments and community groups have said they want companies to work with them to choose the best sites for testing and site construction; at the least, they want a clear regulatory process. In meetings, letters to the editor, and newspaper articles, people worried: Would wave energy projects be a clean energy boon, or would they cause harm to local economies and ocean resources?

Baby Steps toward Great Benefits
At this point, wave power development is about where wind power was 15 years ago, according to Annette von Jouanne, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Oregon State University (OSU) and director of OSU's Wallace Energy Systems and Renewables Facility, a leading wave energy research institution. Much testing will be required to determine which technologies are the most efficient for a particular location and what effects they might have on the environment.

But before the new industry can become technologically reliable and economically competitive, upfront investment will be needed. Countries leading the way, including Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Portugal, provide public funding for research and incentives to help this emerging technology become more attractive to investors. In the United States, however, government subsidies have thus far gone mostly for fossil fuels. A measure to support alternatives was attached to the $700-billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act signed by President Bush on October 8. It extended production tax credits for wind energy, authorized $800 million in bonds for varied alternative energy production, and established a tax credit for marine and hydrokinetic energy generation projects with a minimum capacity of 150 kilowatts if they are put into production by 2011.

The first significant wave power generator was invented by Stephen Salter at the University of Edinburgh in the 1970s, during the earlier oil crisis, but the project lost its funding before he was able to test his "Salter's Duck" at sea. Since then, many different types of wave power systems have been developed. Some are designed to be fixed to the shoreline, a breakwater, to the seabed in shallow water, or to an offshore platform such as an oil rig; others are designed to float, moored near the shore or farther offshore.

The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter, used in the Aguçadoura wave farm three miles off Portugal's coast, is a semi-submerged, articulated tube connected by hinged joints and moored to the seafloor by cables. As the joints move with the waves, they activate hydraulic pumps that power generators to produce electricity that is transported to shore through a submarine cable and fed directly into the national distribution grid. Three tubes have been installed thus far, at a cost of $13 million, capable of generating up to 2.25 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1,500 Portuguese homes. (Average household energy consumption varies widely from country to country, and even within the same country, depending on climate and other factors. In Portugal, the household average for 2005 was 3,473 kilowatt hours.) Within the next few years, 25 more tubes are to be added, raising the yield to up to 21 megawatts. The Aguçadoura system was built by the Scottish company Pelamis in partnership with a consortium led by the Portuguese utility Energias de Portugal.

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."

FERC's assertion of authority helped to catalyze the recent "gold rush" (as did EPRI's assessment of wave power's potential), but as long as that authority is not fully established, investors are likely to hesitate. "Uncertainty of regulation is a bane of industry," said Fujita. While the jurisdictional issue is being settled, however, EDF and others see an opportunity to shape standards.

"We do have a chance to get it right this time," Fujita said. "It has not reached the point where it's hard to regulate. We have a tendency to wait until there is a crisis--as happened with commercial fishing, for instance."

EDF has organized a group, which includes leading participants in the ocean renewable energy and hydropower industries and conservation organizations, to explore opportunities and challenges presented by ocean renewable energy. They agreed on a set of principles, and on September 9 this year published a draft "Shared Vision and Call to Action."

The approach the group favors is based on performance standards and a strong regulatory framework, rather than a prescriptive approach, which relies on trying to predict impacts and then specifying technology based on expectations. "Better to say what we want--for example, we don't want to grind up fish--and let industry work it out," Fujita said.

"Ocean energy, which is created by the effect of the sun, wind, and spin of the Earth, holds great promise for reducing worldwide fossil fuel use, an essential step in defending the oceans from climate change-driven environmental damage," declares the draft vision statement. "It is an elegant symmetry that power drawn from waves and tides could actually help ensure the health of the oceans themselves. Moreover, it is far more palatable to draw renewable power from the oceans than to extract more oil from them, as is currently being proposed."

Exploring the Unknown
Although wave-generated power may be one of the most benign ways of producing energy, these projects are expected eventually to be large-scale, with as yet unknown impacts on ocean processes, marine life, fisheries, and the shore. At a workshop at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center in October 2007, scientists identified some key issues requiring study. These include the emission of electromagnetic fields that can affect fish and other sea creatures that use the earth's electromagnetic field to navigate, alteration of coastal currents and offshore sand movement, and the possibility that sea turtles, marine mammals, and other ocean creatures might become entangled in lines and cables. Also suggested was the possibility that the installations, if large enough, could affect migration corridors for salmon, crabs, sturgeon, whales, and other creatures. Lighting on the structures could affect seabirds. A report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this fall detailing the workshop findings recommended that installations should not be placed in sensitive areas, including anywhere near to shore at a depth of less than 40 meters. (See http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/waveenergy/.)

"We may change things in the ocean we can't predict," said Richard Charter, a Bodega Bay resident and consultant with Defenders of Wildlife who has been involved with offshore issues for 30 years. "The upwelling that occurs between Fort Bragg and Point Arena is incredibly productive, one of only a few such places in the world's oceans. That is a global resource. You might not want to pick one of the world's top four upwelling spots to put a wave array in."

"It's a really exciting new technology, with a lot of potential upsides," said Pete Stauffer, Oregon policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, but "there are likely to be significant impacts, at the local scale, to the nearshore environment." Surfrider members are interested in seeing these projects proceed, Stauffer said, but in the right way, with "good environmental assessments, siting away from sensitive areas, and monitoring." Surfrider members also worry that wave power installations could diminish surfing waves and interfere with other recreational uses.

Many conservationists support scaling the projects up over time, to incorporate what is learned from monitoring. By adopting this adaptive management approach, installations can be modified as they grow, and even shut down if they prove to be too harmful.

California's Waves
Other than environmental concerns, one of the biggest worries shared by communities in both Oregon and California is that broad exclusionary zones might be set up around the facilities, shutting out other users.

Off Fort Bragg, PG&E received a preliminary FERC permit to study an area of "68 square miles right in front of the harbor, which is almost 100 percent of the fishing grounds," said Jim Martin, West Coast regional director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance and a member of Fishermen Interested in Safe Hydrokinetics (FISH) Committee, a Mendocino County-based alliance of recreational and commercial fishing associations.

Another PG&E study site, off Eureka and the Samoa Peninsula in Humboldt County, is 136 square miles, "right in the middle of prime crabbing grounds," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

The fishermen aren't worried that they'll be shut out of the entire area awarded in the permits--the wave farms would be much smaller--but they are concerned that PG&E has not provided more specifics about where they believe the facilities would be sited within these areas. Other projects that have received permits along the coast have asked for much smaller study areas and provided more specifics about the projects, including their expected size.

Bill Toman, PG&E's project manager for the North Coast wave projects, responded that the company has not pinpointed any sites yet. "We wanted to study a large area systematically to find the one place to put the demonstration project," he said. "We've got a football field that we're going to try to find a place to put the football on. We'll be looking at small areas one at a time."

Before a company can begin building a wave facility, it must apply to FERC for a license and also obtain permits from other federal and state agencies, including the Fish and Wildlife Service and, in California, the State Lands Commission and Coastal Commission. Coastal communities and fishing groups will have a chance to provide input as part of these processes, but many believe that will be too late. "This is the time for people to get involved, before there's a proposal on the table," said Martin. "Once you have a proposal, it's usually already a done deal."

PG&E will not make decisions about specific sites or technologies until it has collected data and met with federal and state agencies as well as local groups and governments, Toman said. "We want to understand all of the stakeholders' issues and concerns, so we can put together a testing program that everyone is comfortable with." Input from the fishermen will be key, he said. "We would view them as one of the most valuable knowledge assets we could incorporate in the process."

Eureka crab fisherman Dave Bitts, for one, remains skeptical. "Let's face it, we're a flea. The fishery is important to us [fishermen]--it's what we do--and to the community, but compared to carbon-free energy? That's a gorilla."

PG&E, like all private California utilities, is under a State mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and hopes that each of its study sites might provide up to 40 megawatts when fully built out. If test results are promising, PG&E would contract with a technology company to first build a demonstration project of no more than five megawatts, then, if it is successful, expand to a commercial facility within the next seven to ten years.

"Hopefully by the time we want to build the commercial project, the federal government will have [the jurisdictional dispute] resolved," Toman said.

Oregon Takes the Lead
Oregon has jumped out in front to both guide and encourage the development of this emerging industry off its coast. Lincoln County was one of the first applicants, in 2006, for a preliminary permit from FERC, attempting to assert its local authority early in the process when it could count the most. After FERC denied the County's application, Commissioner Terry Thompson said that the County "accomplished what we wanted to. We got people's attention, made them aware of the situation."

In February 2007, County commissioners established Fishermen Involved in Natural Energy (FINE), a 19-member advisory committee, which has worked with energy technology companies and OSU to determine the best test sites off the County's shores. "So far, we've had minimal conflicts [over test sites] due to the involvement of FINE," said Thompson, who is also a fisherman. Testing is now on the fast track. Last summer, OSU tested a wave energy buoy off Lincoln County, as did Finavera Renewables. Finavera's buoy sank shortly before it was to be removed and was not recovered until nine months later. "One of the things we learned from Finavera is that it's really expensive to recover one of these things if it sinks," Thompson said.

The Oregon Wave Energy Trust, an association of industrial, academic, and state agency representatives, was established in 2007 to help support research and development, and to work with coastal communities and other stakeholders to develop the state's wave energy industry in "a responsible manner." OSU, the Department of Energy, and the University of Washington are establishing the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, funded in part by the Department of Energy, to help accelerate the development of wave power technologies and to study possible environmental impacts.

Community groups up and down the Oregon coast are beginning to organize to gain some leverage over siting and other potential issues. "We're at the beginning," Thompson said. "The stakeholder groups really need to get together, to unify and share information, if they want a say in the process. We haven't yet gotten to the point where the different groups are communicating."

In 2009, Oregon will begin revising its Territorial Sea Plan to include a comprehensive plan for siting wave projects, a project many see as the first step toward zoning the waters off its coast. The State of Oregon and FERC signed a memorandum of understanding in March 2008 in which the agency agreed to consider Oregon's comprehensive siting plan when issuing permits.

Oregon is well ahead of other states both in encouraging wave power and ensuring that it is developed appropriately. "Oregon is leading the nation on this, no doubt," said Roger Bedard, EPRI's ocean energy leader.

While many coastal residents are concerned about the way wave power projects are proceeding in the current regulatory environment, most are eager to see it develop as an industry, if it can be done without harming the environment or other users.

"Fishermen don't oppose the concept of wave energy, generally speaking," said Zeke Grader. "We're interested in the potential for clean, non-carbon energy--we want to remove some of the old hydro dams [in rivers along the coast], and that power would have to be replaced somehow. But people are very much concerned about the loss of important fishing grounds, between this and the Marine Protected Areas."

"If they can do it and it's safe for the environment, who would be against it?" Jim Martin said.