Stormy seas: ocean power promoters struggle to overcome a stiff current of challenges

Earth Island Journal, Spring, 2009 by Larissa Curlik

What Will the Fishes Think?

Despite technological advances in tidal technologies, environmental concerns persist. In Eastport, residents are anxious that ORPC's turbines will negatively affect the marine environment and hurt the commercial fisheries for urchins, clams, scallops, and lobsters. 'A lot of people make their living on the water here," says Will Hopkins, director of the Cobscook Bay Resource Center (CBRC), a community group focused on sustainable resource management and economic development. "My concern is that there is just not going to be enough room to accommodate several industrial-scale projects as well as some of the traditional uses of fishing here."

Fishermen are worried that the electricity transmission cables will tangle fishing lines. The sound of turning turbines might scare off schools of herring, alewives, and smelts that enter the bay and serve as forage species for larger fish. Turbines may also threaten mammals such as humpback and right whales, harbor porpoises, and seals. "The hope is that schools of fish and marine mammals will be able to detect the presence of these turbines turning and simply flow around them like any other obstacle in the ocean," Hopkins says. "But the testing--acoustic, underwater video, and other monitoring--that will take place as ORPC goes to a commercial scale will be very critical."

Environmental studies conducted by ORPC show that the turbines have little impact on marine life. But Dana Murch, supervisor of dam and hydropower projects for Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, says because the technology is new, the long-term effects on the ecosystem are unknown. "You have to start putting literally hundreds of units in to get a commercial-size project," Murch says. "The dilemma is that I don't know what the environmental impact is of one [turbine], let alone hundreds."

Facing a Riptide

While the ocean-power industry works to hone its technology, wave and tidal entrepreneurs face an even tougher challenge--finding the financing to keep their research afloat. In Portugal, the leader in commercial projects, the government provides generous support to the industry But in the US, the ocean-power industry--unlike wind and solar energy, which receive some federal funding and support--relies solely on private investments. Given the current economic downturn and drop in oil prices, securing funding has been harder than ever. 'All the angel investors and venture capitalists are on the sidelines. They're like deer in a headlight," says Chris Souer, CEO of ORPC. "Government funding dramatically needs to increase because it doesn't look like the private sector is going to in the near term. It's possible that the whole [ocean-power] industry could die in the US because of lack of funding."

Souer and others in the ocean-power industry' are hoping at least for the kinds of tax credits and other public investment that have helped make wind economically competitive. When commercial wind power first started, it cost more than 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now it costs about five cents per kWh. According to the EPRI report, ocean power will range between four and 12 cents per kWh initially, but could eventually become less expensive than wind and solar because of its high density.