 European nations are vying to pull in wave-energy developers and become market leader. ELISABETH JEFFRIES finds out why Portugal is now winning
Engineers at Peniche, a port north of Lisbon, have been running trials in the ocean prior to installing three new Pelamis wave-power devices in mid-2007. If they are successful, the machines will together produce 2.25 megawatts (MW), which will be fed in to the grid onshore. It will be Europe’s first commercial wave farm and will be scaled later to a full 20 MW. The wind blowing across the surface of the ocean creates energy carried by waves across thousands of kilometres. The energy is tightly packed within the top five metres of the ocean, and is hence a denser source of energy than other renewable energy sources such as wind – where the energy is generally dissipated. Tidal stream energy, created through currents occurring during the ebb and flow of tides, is also less dense than wave energy. “For a project with this degree of novelty, they’re doing very well – no malfunctions have occurred,” says Rui Barros, manager of project developer Enersis, which is buying the devices from the Scottish wave power technology company Ocean Power Delivery (OPD). He reports “good weather windows” between November and February, and that the machines are on schedule to be placed offshore by early summer. Offshore operations such as the installation of moorings, anchors, chains and cables need to be tested. “We are really close to a firm operation,” he remarks. The Portuguese west coast is an excellent place to develop wave farms, and is capable of generating five gigawatts (GW) of wave power or 20% of the nation’s electricity demand. Wave power would also net the country approximately €40bn, while creating up to 10,000 new jobs according to optimistic projections by the Centro de Energia das Ondas (CEO). Other parts of Europe with matching wave power include the British Isles and areas around Scandinavia. But project developers have instead flocked to Portugal. Enersis has been joined by, for instance, Finavera Renewables, a project developer which out-sources its manufacturing and plans to create devices that will compete with Pelamis. The company has found a site in Portugal and plans a three-year project. Attracting the developers is a large carrot worth the €0.225/kWh that Portuguese utilities are obliged to pay for renewable energy – far more than most other European tariffs for clean energy. Given that it relies on imports for 85% of its energy, it is not surprising that the Portuguese government has chosen this route. They’re even more worried about energy security than their northern European neighbours. Embarrassingly for the UK government, Portugal has lured many companies away from the UK, whose resources are equally good and which could generate 200 MW of marine power (including tidal energy) by 2012 and 3 GW by 2020, according to industry sources. The UK has been host to major technology research at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland, where OPD, for one, has been testing out its machines.  However, the technology is then being exported overseas. Several developers have admitted that they “are planning to create a project” at some point in the UK, but some of the specifics are absent. To get more developers back to the UK, the national incentive programme would have to change. As things stand the carrot simply isn’t large enough.
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