That at some point in the future, ALL energy consumed on the earth will be derived from renewable sources!

The power of the world’s oceans could make massive contributions to energy security and mitigation of CO 2 emissions. The most familiar forms of ocean energy are waves and tides. It is estimated that harnessing their forces could yield more than four times the amount of electricity obtainable from today’s global power generation capacity. How are the technologies advancing to give ocean waves and tides a stronger role in fuelling the world’s economies? What can be done to accelerate progress?

At some point in the future, all energy consumed on the earth will be derived from renewable sources. The timeframe for this fundamental move from fossil to sustainable fuels is debatable, but the end result is not. It will occur for two reasons, one being environmental concerns and the ongoing effort to counteract climate change. The second reason is that, simply put, the rate of use of the world’s fossil fuel resource outstrips its replenishment by a factor of millions. The life expectancy of oil is estimated to be decades; for coal, it is a few centuries. Reserves of coal, oil, and gas will simply run out.

Many alternatives to fossil fuels exist, and in amounts that greatly exceed the current rate of human energy consumption. Perhaps the most under-explored, and certainly the most under-utilised, is ocean energy. It is commonly estimated that the power in the ocean, in all its myriad forms, surpasses present human usage by a factor of more than five thousand-fold.

There are many vastly different forms of possible ocean energy that contribute to this potential. Here we shall focus on recent developments with waves and tides. A recent National Geographic magazine article estimated the annual global electricity generation potential of wave and tidal energy alone to be more than 91 000 TWh (source: Ecofys). Contrast this with the world’s current annual electricity generation capacity of around 20 000 TWh.

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