I wrote a paper on wave energy last year for Energy Resources with Professor Hickcox. I thought it was an extremely innovative way of collecting energy and a new set of systems that would add more oomph to hydropower. Of course, there are many ideas on how to utilize waves near the shore and convert that energy into copious amounts of electricity, but the expenses for building these systems and maintaining them far outweigh their promise to bring cheap energy over the course of a few years. Not to mention you would need a lot of these systems to generate the same amount of energy that we receive from traditional fossils fuels. I find wave power to be a futuristic idea that can definitely be implemented in society, but obviously the drawbacks, mostly financial make the majority seek another way to be alternative. It got me thinking about all the crazy ways people have come up with to produce alternative fuels and how some of them are actually on the forefront of proving their worth.
Here is the article. Wave Power Faces Rough Seas – Scientific American
