Support for wave energy swells
Bob Moon: For years now, rich and famous Massachusetts residents have been opposing plans to erect 130 wind turbines offshore. They complain it would spoil the view off Cape Cod.
This week, the state’s congressional delegation urged the federal government to approve a test project that would use floating wind turbines. They’d be positioned nearly 50 miles off the coast and effectively out of sight.
At the opposite end of the country, there are hopes for turning the ocean itself into a power source, but even those plans have encountered some choppy seas.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson has our story.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson: If there’s a symbol of the ocean’s raw power, it’s the crashing wave. Oregon State University electrical engineering professor Annette von Jouanne is working on ways to capture the water’s potential.
Annette von Jouanne: As soon as the waves start to crest, we start to lose that energy.
von Jouanne runs the nation’s top wave energy research lab.
von Jouanne: Our goal is to harness the energy in the heaving ocean swells.
How it works: Giant offshore buoys capture the ocean’s unrelenting force to generate electricity. The churning water has what von Jouanne calls “energy density,” meaning that a little bit of ocean can produce a lot of electricity. Enough to impress Oregon Congresswoman Darlene Hooley.
Darlene Hooley: The potential is there to produce about 10 percent of the energy needs of this country.
The Democratic Representative sponsored a bill to put $250 million into wave energy.
Hooley: It means jobs, it’s research and development. It means new investments into the coastal communities.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission already has a dozen permit applications for projects, including wave energy parks with arrays of buoys that connect to the grid by cables on the ocean floor. Suddenly, the open ocean starts to look a bit more restricted.
Kevin Dunn: I’m all for new and innovative ways of getting energy, but I’m almost certain that anywhere that they do this will be another closed area for us.
Kevin Dunn of Astoria, Oregon is a commercial fisherman. He’s worried that fishermen won’t be able to drag their nets through these new wave energy parks.
Dunn: There’s places that it might be absolutely wonderful and there are places that we may really, really, really not want them and given the history, chances are they’re going to be right where we don’t want ’em.
The pursuit of alternative and renewable energy is a kind of modern-day gold rush: Everyone’s staking claims.
Depending on how you look at it, the ocean’s half-full or half-empty.
I’m Elizabeth Wynne Johnson for Marketplace.
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