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Abstract
Ideologies, instruments and institutions that promote ocean energies (OE), a marine renewable including wave and tidal devices technologies, are examined within an ecological modernisation (EM) perspective. EM type arguments provide ideological justification for OE projects, but are vulnerable to environmental and cost critiques. Already, large tidal barrage projects have faced opposition from environmentalists, even though they offer significant generation capacity. Unlike wind energy, where grassroots activists played a vital role, the strongest institutional advocates for OE are larger firms, universities, and specialist agencies, together with sub-national governments. Regarding instruments, the overall amount of subsidies combined with political support seems more important than feed-in tariffs. Given a backlash against renewables and a competing offshore wind sector, it remains unclear whether a ‘blue growth’ ecological modernisation strategy can promote what remains a Cinderella renewable.
Notes
1. Sometimes described as ocean renewable energy (ORE) and ‘marine and hydrokinetic’ (MHK) energy, the latter especially in the USA.
2. See http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report for full details of this extensive report.
3. In some cases pumping and storage of water is used in tidal barrage projects to reduce intermittency.
4. See National Renewable Energy Action Plan for the United Kingdom (2010); Article 4 of the Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC. p. 7. See http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/transparency_platform/doc/national_renewable_energy_action_plan_uk_en.pdf
5. The EMEC database is prepared by the European Marine Energy Centre, the Orkney Islands, Scotland and can be found at: http://www.emec.org.uk/marine-energy/. Some 268 wave and tidal developers can be discerned from this source. The 16 identifiable university or high public institutes constitute about 6% of the total pool of wave and tidal developers, although in practice their level of involvement is much greater than this.
6. Bridge et al. (Citation2013, p. 333) augment the basic observation that renewables are deployed unevenly across and within states with several distinctive geographic concepts: absolute and relative location; landscape; territoriality; spatial differentiation; scale; and spatial embeddedness and path dependency.
7. See: http://aw-energy.com/the-waveroller-was-installed
9. This full scale testing centre was established following a recommendation of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in 2001 and draws on diverse UK public funding streams, commercial fees, as well as EU grants and awards. See: Lawrence et al (Citation2013) and http://www.emec.org.uk/about-us/funders/ and http://www.emec.org.uk/about-us/emec-history/.
10. See for details: http://www.clusterenergia.com/ficheros%5CGUIDE%20TO%20WAVE%20POWER%20CAPACITY%20IN%20THE%20BASQUE%20COUNTRY.pdf
13. This is Directive 2009/28/EC, and it amends earlier directives from 2001 (2001/77/EC) and 2003 (2003/30/EC).
14. See: http://www.merseytidalpower.co.uk/
15. The HoC report notes that the DECC’s study of costs used a 40 year financial life-time and variable discounts rates between 3 and 10%. Such assumptions can mean that tidal barrages may well be workable for 100 years or more (HoC/ECC Citation2013, Par.27, p. 13).
16. Allan et al. (Citation2011) describe levelised costs as ‘The levelised costs reported for each technology is the cost of a unit of electricity generation supplied to the existing electricity network and is appropriate for comparing single generation units.’ (p. 24). Levelised costs do not usually include system or grid costs, which fall onto the grid, for example in the need for compensatory baseload to match variability in electricity generation. Moreover, externality costs, or the costs of associated pollution, are not included.
17. These included a Marine Renewables Deployment Fund of £42m since 2006; a Marine Renewables Proving Fund of £22.5m since 2009; A dedicated Scottish wave and tidal scheme (WATERS) of £6m value; a UK Marine Energy Array Demonstrator of £20m value since 2011; a Scottish government funded Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund of £15m (Vantoch-Wood and Connor Citation2013,).
18. In 2012 US dollars.
19. For details see: http://www.saltireprize.com/challenge
20. The strike price rate set for Wave and Tidal stream devices is £305 per Mw for the years 2014-2019. A good explanation of the CfD mechanism is offered by (Ceeney et al. Citation2013): ‘In simple terms, the CfD will set a ’strike price‘ which is designed to represent a fixed rate of return for the generator on the power it produces, irrespective of the prevailing wholesale electricity price. During the life of the contract, if the prevailing wholesale electricity price is below the strike price, the generator will receive a top-up payment to make up that ’difference‘, and when wholesale prices exceed the strike price the generator will be required to pay back that notional difference’.
22. See: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-26658228
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-12969980
23. The full verdict of the Court can be read at: http://www.nzlii.org/cgi-bin/download.cgi/cgi-bin/download.cgi/download/nz/cases/NZEnvC/2011/26.pdf
24. The US Navy have a well established OE project, mainly centred in Hawaii, which includes testing facilities, but they have also worked with Ocean Power Technologies to develop a power buoy.
25. A full list with installed capacities and a map of exact locations can be accessed at Ko et al. (Citation2011)
26. See testimony by Mr. Martin Spray (HoC/ECC Citation2013, p. 18) who claims that four out of five South Korean projects will not go ahead due to environmental objections. See also: Save International (Citation2013).
27. Ocean energy was explicitly allocated a significant share of the overall renewables mix at 5 per cent, which is more than Hydro (4%), Solar PV (4%) and Geothermal (4%), but less than wind (both onshore and offshore) (13%). See: Mathews (Citation2012, p. 764)
28. There are also tidal fence proposals emerging in Alaska and Nova Scotia.
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