Ride the wave

As I've said before, and will keep on saying, the oil is going to run out. It may not happen in your lifetime, but for all intents and purposes, the oil will run out in this century - at least in terms of a supply adequate to meet the current global demand. Many younger readers will live to see it. Here in the United States, far too many of our leaders, both political and industrial, are far too heavily invested in Big Oil to do anything to endanger it. This, I believe, leads them to keep their heads in the sand and deny the evidence of science which demands a change to clean, renewable energy sources. And every time gas prices start to dip downward, people are encouraged to stay in their comfortable shells and not worry about it.

Fortunately for us, not everyone on the planet feels that way. A Norwegian energy company is about to build the first commercial "wave farm" off the coast of Portugal to harness the power of the ocean's movement to create clean energy.

The power generators, like giant, orange sausages floating on water, will use wave motion to produce electricity by pumping high-pressure fluids to motors, Norsk Hydro AS said. The Norwegian energy company is a major backer of the project.

The generators were developed by Ocean Power Delivery, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, which signed an 8-million-euro deal with a Portuguese consortium to build three Pelamis P-750 wave power generators next year.

Three generators for 8M euros? Compared to the cost of a nuclear reactor, that's practically free. How effective will the wave generators be? Well, they don't produce that much energy, but they can be put far enough off shore not to bother people, and still crank out a respectable amount of energy.

The first, three-generator phase of the wave farm would produce 2.25 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply 1,500 Portuguese homes. Norsk Hydro said producing that much energy in a conventional fossil fuel plant would emit 6,000 tons of climate-damaging carbon dioxide.

Too soon to say, but it certainly sounds exciting. Until such time as a truly sci-fi level innovation in power generation comes along, I have long felt that the conversion to environmentally friendly, clean renewable energy wouldn't come from just one source. It would have to be a patchwork of many types of better energy. Some areas can use solar, some are more suited for wind. There are still thousands of sites on rivers around the country where small dams could accommodate hydro power plants, but we don't build them because they wouldn't be "big enough." Putting these wave farms off of most coasts could add more. Cross your fingers.