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Oregon leads wave-energy race |
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Sunday, 02 March 2008 |
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SALEM, ORE. The Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a nonprofit association led by acting director Justin Klune, announced in January it received its first $1million from the Oregon Innovation Council. The Salem-led group, which was promised $4.2 million over the next two years, plans to spend its first year focusing on studying the potential ecological effects of wave energy developments and working with existing ocean users to come up with ways to best share Oregon’s wave resource.
“Oregon is being viewed as a friendly environment for renewable energy companies in that we’re trying to bring together the community around environmental concern as well as commerce and renewable energy,” says David Chen, chair of the Oregon Innovation Council [see “Oracle of Oregon,” SI, December 2007]. Chen says the council’s role is to help provide building blocks, such as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensing and rate subsidies, that would enable the wave energy industry to get up on its knees.
Oregon’s coast has the potential to provide 10 percent of the state’s electricity needs by 2025, according to the OregonWave Energy Trust. Six projects along the coast have applied for preliminary permits with FERC. Only one, a 2- megawatt wave energy project in Douglas County, near Reedsport, has passed the preliminary permitting process and is submitting a license application. The project, a joint venture between Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative and Ocean Power Technologies Inc., would be the first grid-connected commercial wave energy project in the United States.
“It would demonstrate Oregon’s leadership in the wave industry, which we hope we could hold onto for the long term,” Klune says. The Oregon Wave Energy Trust—which includes the Oregon Department of Energy, Oregon State University, Finavera Renewables Inc., Portland General Electric, Shorebank Pacific, Stoel Rives law firm and other industry, government and academic organizations—has a goal of installing 500 megawatts of commercial wave energy projects by 2025.
Source: SustainableIndustries.com |
Ocean Energy News 
