Sometimes I read about truly breakthrough innovations and I think “How did they even think to do that?” And other times I see things that appear to be obvious and think “Why has no one figured this out yet?”
The latter question leads me directly to wave energy (or “tidal energy” as some call it). People have recognized its potential as a source of renewable energy for decades. There have been countless contraptions and inventions to harness it and distribute it onshore. And yet it’s so far down the list of energy sources today that it barely registers.
Consider this:
About 57% of the electricity currently generated by power stations in the US could be satisfied by harnessing the motion of waters within the nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone, if only someone could figure out how to get their hands on all those clean kilowatts.
Today there are many offshore wind farms and floating solar arrays contributing clean energy to the world’s power grid. We should add more anchored buoys that capture the consistent and reliable energy created by ocean waves.
In fact, here’s a short-term goal to consider: Let’s build as many wave energy farms as we have offshore oil platforms. Some online research indicates there are around 1,500 offshore oil platforms today and only 25 wave energy farms. If we can chart a course to have as many (or more) wave energy farms as we have oil platforms perhaps we can truly start to share the load of energy production.
The article that inspired this post, and the main image of this article, is via https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/29/wave-energy-today-1-25-megawatts-tomorrow-2300-terawatt-hours-per-year