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Wave energy research in Britain is under threat again following a report
which argues that public funding for large offshore projects should be restricted
to a token sum. The report, by the government’s Renewable Energy Advisory
Group, calls instead for more government investment to develop ways of generating
electricity from hydro-electric plants, wind, waste and crops: technologies
which have existing markets.

The decision is complicated by the publication of a review of wave energy
by the government’s Energy Technology Support Unit, which shows that the
cost of electricity generated from wave devices has fallen considerably
in recent years, and that new designs could make even greater savings.

The wave energy review was not completed in time for the renewables
group to consider it. Nevertheless, the group gives offshore wave machines
the thumbs down on economic grounds, and suggests that they should be given
‘no further significant research and development expenditure’.

Stephen Salter, professor of engineering design at the University of
Edinburgh and a pioneer of wave power, described the group’s conclusions
as ‘nonsense’. Improvements made over the past decade have brought down
the theoretical costs of producing electricity from his department’s device,
the Edinburgh Duck, to about 16p per kilowatt-hour. A radical redesign to
overcome technical problems highlighted by ETSU has further reduced the
cost.

Salter is reticent about the scale of these reductions, but ETSU’s own
computer models are believed to put the cost at around 4p/kwh, similar
to the cost of energy from coal and gas.

ETSU’s estimates are based on the assumption that all technical problems
with a wave device are solved. It stresses that wave energy technology is
‘relatively immature’, and that a great deal of R&D will be needed before
a practical offshore machine is built. The best prospects, it says, may
lie with radical redesigns of older ideas, such as Salter’s Duck, or one
of several new designs which promise electricity ‘at substantially lower
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The renewables group makes no recommendations about the most developed
wave energy devices – those sited on the coastline. One such machine has
been built on the island of Islay by researchers from Queen’s University
of Belfast. ETSU estimates that it could produce electricity at 6p/kWh.

Trevor Whittacker, who manages the wave energy programme at Queen’s,
believes that the market for shoreline machines must be developed now. Offshore
devices will not be needed for 20 years, he says, but ‘if you’re going to
go for serious energy production you’ve got to go offshore’. He warns that
if the basic research is not done now, ‘you’re going to grind to a halt
in 10 to 15 years’.

David Lindley, managing director of British Wind Power and a member
of the renewables group, denies that vested interest played any part in
the report. John Twidell, director of the Energy Studies Unit at the University
of Strathclyde, pointed out that two of the 12-member group have interests
in wind energy and one in solar power; none has commercial ties to wave
power.

Lindley says that the report is strongly biased towards generating energy
from biomass. ‘To my knowledge nobody on the committee has any interest
in biomass,’ he says. ‘We were asked to decide, if there was a finite budget,
how would you distribute it?’

A theme running through the group’s report is the need to bolster the
industries that have grown up over the past two years for generating electricity
from, for example, wind and waste. These markets have grown chiefly because
regional electricity companies have been forced to buy electricity from
Nuclear Electric and renewable energy producers at an inflated price under
the non-fossil fuel obligation.

The NFFO was conceived as a means to keep Nuclear Electric ‘cash rich’,
but is proving to be ‘a useful mechanism’ for creating markets in new technologies,
says the report. Twidell says that by accident the government has found
an ingenious way of forcing the pace of technology. Companies receive a
return on their wind turbines, or chicken litter furnaces only when they
begin producing electricity. ‘Once the companies are generating, they want
to make the plant more efficient, so the research is very applied and market-oriented,’
he says.

According to Martin Holdgate, director of the World Conservation Union,
and chairman of the renewables group, ‘the hope is that as the technology
becomes proven, it will become an increasingly attractive investment’.

The group argues that by 2025, renewables should contribute about 60
terawatt-hours of electricity a year, which is equivalent to one-fifth of
present annual production. To reach this goal, it says ‘the government must
intervene in the market’.

Holdgate argues that Britain’s commitment to the Climate Change Convention,
signed at the Earth Summit last June, is reason enough for the government
to give extra support to technologies that produce no polluting gases. Renewables
are also at a disadvantage because the full environmental damage of fossil
fuels is not taken into account in their costs.

Despite its optimistic view, the group calls on the government to increase
the amount of renewable energy bought under the NFFO to around 1500 megawatts
over the next seven years. This would still leave renewables with only 0.1
per cent of Britain’s electricity supply. Environmentalists say this is
a pitiable increase.

Lindley emphasises that this figure is only a ‘floor’ level. If 1500
megawatts is all that the government approves by the year 2000 ‘I’ll be
very disappointed’, he says.