The UK government announced this week that licences had been awarded for ten wave and tidal power projects off the coast of Scotland. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond described the choppy Scottish waters as the ‘Saudi Arabia of marine energy.’ Hardly: when the six wave and four tidal projects are fully operational they’ll generate around 1.2GW of power, about the same as one average sized conventional power station. The 10 million barrels of oil which pours out of Saudi Arabia each day is enough to supply 1000 power stations. Even so, this investment in wave and tidal is significant, because the power it will provide is secure, low carbon and – if you exclude the huge capital costs – essentially free.
Unlike solar photovoltaic power, which is quite a high tech business, wave and tidal power is quite low tech. You just need to be able to weld together big chunks of metal that will withstand the battering of the violent Scottish seas, and find ways of turning movement into electricity. It should provide some good opportunities for engineering firms that were once involved in shipbuilding and the declining North Sea oil and gas industry.