The New York Times Green blog published a great article about a recent report from IHS Emerging Energy Research on tidal wave. Even if it has been starting very slowly, the energy source could bring up to 10 GW by 2030 globally.
“The global ocean energy sector is at a turning point,” the company’s report says. More than 45 wave and tidal prototypes are expected to be ocean-tested in 2010 and 2011. Only nine were tested in 2009.”
Here is another renewable energy source that could power all our wildest dreams. But as I stated before: we should better rely on several of them as none of them is perfect.
Indeed, as Elisabeth Rosenthal notes in her article :
The European Energy Association estimates that, globally, the oceans could yield more than 100.000 terawatt hours a year if the technology to harness that power can be perfected. That is more than five times the electricity the world uses in a year.
Given the current prediction this would take a lot of time, but I guess that David JC MacKay sums up well the situation when he notes that both tidal energy could bring up to3.7 kwh per person per day on a global scale when we need around 80.
