Wave Power

I'm standing on the grayish-white sands of Malibu Beach in Southern California, watching autumn waves crash upon the wet tide-line. It's early morning and a damp mist hangs over the blue-grey waves. The sun has come up, but the world is solemn on this overcast day. I sniff the salt-brine air and gaze out to sea where a few sailboats straddle the sharp line between the water and sky.

Suddenly, I feel my heart jump. I've just spotted a pod of dolphins two hundred yards off the coast. A dozen slick gray bodies effortlessly arc in and out of the water. I can almost hear them crashing into the foamy waves. They remind me of a procession of dancers leaping across a stage. It's like a scene out of some Discovery Channel nature show, only this is real. For a inland-born person like me, seeing live dolphins in their natural habitat for the first time is thrilling. On this somber morning, I feel happy to be alive. In a few minutes the dolphins exit, stage right, and I'm left listening to the waves and the squawks of seagulls calling to each other on the morning breeze.

This is the world of the ancient waters. For hundreds of millions of years the ocean has followed a strict imperative. It is continuously pulled and pushed by the gravity linking the earth and moon. This is the ocean tide.

The Ocean's Power at Our Fingertips

At Stanford University in Palo Alto California, a group of experts gathers to discuss the feasibility of converting the energy of the o

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h and red tape. Another issue is real estate. Feo says that the typical coastal lease provided by the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) is 2-5 years. He says that the start-up companies creating this technology need a longer lease time to convince potential investors that wave power is here to stay and has the potential to provide a hefty return on investment. Feo asserts that the short leases "just won't work. Sooner or later, you have to get beyond pilot projects." Oceans of Money When commercial wave energy projects finally do get off the ground, it will likely prove to be (and I hear a groan coming) a whale of an investment. California, for one, is a ready market. The state has a mandate to increase renewable energy to 10% of the state's total energy consumption by the 2010. Considering California's vast coastline, tidal technology would seem to be the perfect solution. Maurice Hill, who works on the leasing program at MMS says he believes it's possible to have 10 gigawatts of ocean energy online by 2025, and 3 gigawatts of river and ocean energy up in the same time frame. The Pacific coast states of Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii are the prime candidates for

Category: Science - W