Waving bye bye

Within the British Isles we have, according to quoted figures, up to 25% of Europe's tidal power and 10% of its wave power, with this concentrated around the seas of Scotland. Indeed, the Pentland Firth has been given the nickname 'the Saudi Arabia of tidal power'. The Department for Energy and Climate Change's Renewable energy road map indicates that 300 MW of marine energy will be installed by 2020, although developer appetite has been at a level of around 1.6 GW, according to 'Marine Energy in the UK – State of the Industry Report 2012'. That same document adds that, despite having less than one per cent of the world's population, it has been estimated that UK waters contain around 15% of the world's economically accessible tidal resource and over 10% of the world's economically accessible wave resource. In fact, the UK is leading tidal stream energy generation initiatives. You'd think that this is a situation that UK industry might benefit from, wouldn't you? You know, building up a domestic industry and growing it into a world-leading sector on the back of local demand. Well, you might have thought this was actually happening. For example, a company called Tidal Generation Ltd was formed in 2005, with it designing and assembling the 500 kW demonstrator machine currently installed in Orkney. In 2009, TGL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Rolls-Royce Plc and benefited from the company's expertise in the power generation and marine sectors. In a pamphlet published last year, the firm was 'bigging up' this area of technology. "Rolls-Royce, as a leading global power systems business, aims to be one of the leading OEMs in a market where there is potential to generate more than 20 GW of electricity worldwide." Great, UK-developed technology championed by a UK-headquartered global powerhouse. But, oh dear, Rolls-Royce has just sold off the family silver, even before it was polished, to France's Alstom. Says www.power-eng.com: "TGL is the latest in a string of home-grown maritime renewables to fall prey to foreign interests, thus further eroding an already fragile British lead in the maritime segment of sustainable power generation." And it quotes Dick Winchester, energy columnist and member of the Scottish Government's Energy Advisory Board: "The acquisition by Alstom of Rolls Royce-owned Tidal Generation is the third such strategically important sale of a UK marine renewables company to a foreign owner in the past few years. "The first was Wavegen of Inverness, a wave energy company which was sold to the German company Volth Hydro, and the second was the sale of Marine Current Turbines to German company Siemens. "Given the other two main tidal energy technology contenders are Norwegian and Australian, and that the other wave energy companies appear to already have a large foreign ownership content, it seems evident that while others recognise the potential in these companies, their technology and the energy resource of tidal and wave, the UK either can't or won't. "It's the same old story. While we are great at developing the ideas, we invariably fail to exploit the opportunity." Well, let's hope that the players in this technology set up manufacturing facilities in the UK so that we can gain some benefit. It's just the same situation as with wind power, in fact. We have a resource, but no wind turbine manufacturing industry of any note, although inward investment is envisaged, albeit taking its time. First published in Machinery, November, 2012