Wave energy is making a splash around the world from Tasmania to Ireland. The biggest news was in Portugal on Sept. 30 when a Pelamis unit was towed into the ocean, connected to an underwater cable and moored to the sea floor, at a site where it will stay for the next 15 years.
Portugal and the United Kingdom are the world leaders in government investment in wave energy technology.
The Portuguese project is two years behind schedule and organizers agree the technology is still as green as the energy it produces.
The Pelamis-stocked wave farm will be 3.1 miles off the coast of the village of Agu?adoura. The Pelamis resembles floating redwood trees, strung together by a cable and moving like a giant sea snake. Power comes from the up and down motion.
On Oct. 1, Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) deployed its first PowerBuoy wave energy unit off the coast of Spain. OPT said its wave-power unit is the first of what”s expected to be a string of 10 PowerBuoys planned for the project located three miles off the coast of Santo?a, Spain.
OPT has a wave energy plan using even more PowerBouys off the coast of Cape Mendocino. PG&E has not picked a technology, but the Pelamis has been a leading contender for wave energy projects off Fort Bragg and Eureka.
Down under, Perth”s Carnegie Corporation released a report stating wave power could provide 171,000 megawatts of electricity for Australia — four times the nation”s existing power generation. That caused the firm”s stock to skyrocket. Critics say the estimate is inflated, based on computer modeling and a mere seven offshore test buoys.
Carnegie is in talks with the state government about setting up a wave-energy trial in Tasmania.
In the U.K., a well-funded wave energy research center has been announcing new initiatives and pushing the technology.
Scottish Power last week confirmed three coastal sites for the development of the world”s largest tidal power project. The company said the three sites — two in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland — will generate enough power for about 40,000 homes.
Back in the United States, wave energy still has not made it into the platform of either political party. E-mails sent by this reporter to Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and John McCain asking for any response on the narrow issues of salmon fishing, wave energy and marijuana legalization brought no positions and mixed responses. McCain”s staff didn”t answer at all. Obama”s campaign sent automatic emails which promised a response at a later time.
The only living person to write back was William D. McAllister, a top staffer of Palin”s, who responded on Sept. 4 to an inquiry sent that day.
“The campaign has taken over. Perhaps after … [the] VP debate, they”ll loosen up where she can do interviews on secondary issues. No chance now,” McAllister said.
McAllister was among those who got emails at that now-infamous Yahoo! address stolen by a hacker. Palin used the Yahoo! address instead of her official Alaska state email.
In California”s governor”s office, Arnold Schwarzenegger applied his line-item veto to $3.1 million in funding from a program run by the Department of Fish and Game to restore endangered and threatened salmon, steelhead and other species, reports freelance writer Dan Bacher on the Truthout Website.
In accounts printed in several publications, Bacher lambasts the governor as a phony environmentalist in his article on the cutting of DFG”s Biodiversity Program staff. The staff is responsible for administering and enforcing California”s Endangered Species Act (CESA) as well as reviewing and approving timber harvesting plans and applications for “incidental take” permits, Bacher reports. The state”s efforts for recovery of threatened and endangered species, including CESA-listed species of declining salmon, are also budgeted under this program, according to a statement from California Trout.
“Though the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations claim that ocean conditions” are responsible for the collapse, all available evidence points to increasing water exports out of the California Delta and declining water quality as the main factors behind the dramatic decline of Sacramento River salmon,” Bacher reported.
“At the same time, an unholy trinity of increased water exports, toxic chemicals and invasive species combined to drive four Delta pelagic fish species — delta smelt, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and juvenile striped bass — to the lowest-ever-recorded population levels,” Bacher wrote.
More on salmon: Smithsonian Magazine has printed a book-length piece by Abigail Tucker on the 2008 salmon crisis, which starts out in Ralph Abernathy”s famous, or infamous — depending on who you talk to, boat junkyard in Noyo Harbor, with centerpiece photos by Ryan Anson. The story is a breezy trip with California”s favorite migratory fish from Redding down the Sacramento to the Delta, to sea and back to the Klamath, documenting the history and the issues along the way.
