Wave power devices being tested in Cornwall and at Orkney are 10 times more expensive than other sources of low carbon power and need a radical rethink, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) said.
The energy research body added that even if costs were cut aggressively, wave power would be unlikely to make a significant contribution to the UK’s energy demands in coming decades.
The institute, which has a mission to accelerate low carbon technologies, said the UK’s marine energy strategy should instead prioritise support for tidal stream power, such as a project being tested in the Pentland Firth, which resembles underwater wind turbines. The ETI urged the government to agree a subsidy deal for Atlantis Resource’s MeyGen scheme, which is the world’s first large-scale tidal power project.
Atlantis Resources hopes to ultimately expand the tidal array’s first four turbines to 269, which would generate even more power than the Swansea bay tidal lagoon backed by an independent review last week. Such lagoon projects are further advanced than wave energy projects but some way behind tidal stream power development, and require large levels of investment, the ETI said.
Experts have previously described the UK’s wave power potential as huge and said it could generate a tenth of electricity needs.
But despite being heralded six years ago by Scotland’s then first minister Alex Salmond as on the verge of commercial deployment, the fledgling sector has been dogged by delays and bankruptcies, such as the collapse of Scotland’s Pelamis Wave Power in 2014 and Aquamarine Power in 2015.
The ETI, which is funded by government and companies including Rolls-Royce, EDF and BP, called for a “radical rethink” if the technology is to provide affordable renewable electricity.
Developers, which include Australia’s Carnegie Clean Energy, Finland’s Fortum and the UK’s Seatricity, need to reconsider their approaches to “drastically” cut costs, the ETI said. Grid connections were another concern, it added.
“On wave energy our view is that even with aggressive cost reduction and innovation activities, current attenuator wave energy technologies are highly unlikely to meet the ETI/UK Energy Research Centre marine energy roadmap targets, and are therefore unlikely to make a significant contribution to the UK energy system in the coming decades,” a spokesman said.
However, people in the industry disputed the analysis, saying they would not be testing and developing the technology if they thought it was not commercially viable.
Andy Bristow, managing director at Seatricitysaid it was “nonsense” to suggest wave power was 10 times as expensive as the alternatives.
“We’re confident in our technology but we’re less confident in the UK government’s commitment to renewables. We’re finding it difficult at the moment because of a malaise that seems to have infected the marine renewables sector,” Bristow said.
“We think it’s a shame, because ultimately it’s a no-brainer: it’s clean, it’s green, it has potential to be very cost effective.”
Bristow added that he was surprised the ETI had not consulted the company.
In a statement, Fortum said: “Wave power is still under research, development and piloting phase throughout the world compared to for example solar and wind technologies which are rapidly maturing and becoming more market-based. It is important to understand that the development of new competitive energy technologies takes time.”
Tim Sawyer, CEO of Carnegie, said he believed the report was based on out of date data.
RenewableUK’s deputy chief executive, Maf Smith, said: “The UK is right at the forefront of a global race to develop wave power on a commercial scale. It’s vital that we don’t lose our lead to other countries, who stand to benefit from the years of investment and progress we’ve made. The more we deploy, the cheaper the technology will become.”
The ETI’s views on marine energy come after a global renewable energy body said developments in energy storage could be a “game-changer” for clean power. The Abu Dhabi-based Irena said battery storage capacity for electricity could increase from 1GW today to 250GW by 2030, helping alleviate renewable energy’s intermittent nature.