Thanks to renewed interest in ocean energy in Canada, entrepreneurs are starting to harness the waves and tides off the coast of BC to generate electricity, and kick-start a new energy sector in the process.
“There is a renewed interest in Canada … in extracting energy from waves and tidal currents,” said Andrew Cornett, who leads ocean energy research for the Canadian Hydraulics Centre at the National Research Council.
Research done in the ‘80s petered out, possibly because energy from oil was so cheap, Cornett said. “There wasn’t such a need for alternatives those days as there is now.” Cornett helped spur the ocean energy comeback in 2006 when he and his team published an extensive inventory detailing the ocean energy resources along Canada’s more than 200,000 km of coastline. The inventory singled out the best areas to harvest tidal energy, including the Minas Basin of Nova Scotia on the Atlantic Ocean, Hudson’s Strait and Ungava Bay on the Arctic Ocean, and Georgia Strait and Johnstone Strait on the Pacific Ocean.
In BC: The Canoe Pass project
Chris Knight and Thor Peterson started Canoe Pass Tidal Energy Corporation seven years ago, choosing to base their first project in the narrow Canoe Pass between Quadra and Maude islands in the Strait of Georgia. Knight hopes the venture will help distinguish BC as a cutting-edge ocean energy producer. Using two 250 kW custom-made turbines built by Calgary-based New Energy Corporation Inc., the project is designed to generate a maximum of 500 kW – enough to power about 125 homes. It will start feeding electricity into the BC Hydro grid sometime this summer, after its environmental impact statement is approved.
Paying for the $6.5 million Canoe Pass project has been a huge challenge, said Knight. Right now the ocean energy industry is in its awkward phase. Venture capitalists don’t often like to invest in the projects because they don’t have massive financial returns and they take a long time. Banks don’t want to lend them money either, explained Chris Campbell, executive director of Ocean Renewable Energy Group (OREG) which represents the Canadian ocean energy sector.
The BC Clean Energy Act, which came out in April 2010, allows feedin tariffs to be established for various types of green energy – fixed prices paid for each type of green energy BC Hydro buys from independent power producers (IPPs). A feed-in tariff for ocean energy would mean the price IPPs get for their wave or tidal energy would be appropriate to their relatively higher start-up and operating costs. This relatively higher price for ocean energy would decrease over time as the ocean energy industry becomes more cost-effective, said Campbell.
Keeping BC ocean energy afloat
As a result of the recent resurgence of interest in ocean energy, there are now several sources of government funding to help companies get through the awkward start-up phase. Canoe Pass received new federal government tax and other incentives for ocean energy companies, investments from the Clean Energy Fund and Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, and $2 million from BC’s Innovative Clean Energy Fund.
More government support might give the sector in BC the kick-start it needs to become competitive worldwide. The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE), a Canadian tidal energy research station on the Bay of Fundy, currently operates with $9 million in support from the government of Nova Scotia and $20 million from the federal government.
Ocean energy worldwide
Meanwhile off the coast of Portugal, a wave farm is already feeding 2.25 MW into the Portuguese grid, paid for by a feed-in tariff equivalent to about 31 Canadian cents per kWh. Scotland’s Pelamis Wave Power (PWP) co-created the project, called Aguçadoura, in 2008, and plans to expand the farm’s capacity to 20 MW. PWP achieved a world first in 2004 when their prototype wave energy generator began transmitting energy into the U. K. grid. They have many more megawatts of wave power in the works at other U.K. locations, including up to 20 MW off the west coast of Shetland. The U. K. is the current world leader in ocean energy with more than 55 in-stream tidal projects around the country, thanks to major government support. Planned tidal generating stations could bring as much as 5.6 GW into the U.K. grid in the future. The Rance Tidal Power Station opened in 1966 and generates 240 MW. However, its technology, the tidal barrage, is more damaging to the environment than in-stream tidal turbines.
Tidal energy projects, both barrage and in-stream, have been popping up around the world. South Korea has plans for at least four giant tidal projects totaling about 2.5 GW to be underway by 2017. The first in-stream tidal energy generating station in North America was Race Rocks Tidal Power Demonstration Project on the southern tip of Vancouver Island in 2006. Verdant Power’s RITE project – a 30-turbine, 1 MW tidal pilot energy project is about to launch, pending approval, in the East Channel of New York City’s East River. It will be the first tidal energy plant to feed the US electricity grid. Verdant’s 15 MW CORE project in the St. Lawrence River near Cornwall Ontario is slated to connect to the grid within the next two years.
Why does BC, with its vast ocean energy resources, seem to be falling behind? The current highest base price BC Hydro will pay for power comes out to about 10 cents per kW-h, three times less than Aguçadoura makes through its Portuguese feed-in tariff. This is not enough for emerging technologies, like ocean energy, said Campbell, but it’s a start, and a stopgap until the new feed-in tariff determines a higher rate that will better support ocean energy development. However, a high feed-in tariff could make electricity costly for BC Hydro ratepayers, and therefore it can’t be the only boost for BC’s ocean energy industry.
The environmental balance
One of the major reasons for the renewed interest in ocean energy is its green reputation. It is emission and by-product free, and even its visual pollution is minimal because generators are often invisible from shore. However, the industry is still proceeding cautiously, with much research into ocean energy’s environmental impacts. Cornett and his colleagues at the National Research Council Canadian Hydraulics Centre are now using computer modeling to investigate what happens to the ocean when turbines and other types of generators take energy from the waves or tides.
The ocean energy generators in the water now are very low-impact, said Cornett, but if they harvested large amounts of wave or tidal energy, perhaps five per cent or more, they would risk reducing the strength of shore-bound waves, changing ocean currents, or even reducing the difference between high and low tides. All this could affect ocean and shoreline ecology.
Dominic Tollit assesses the impacts of ocean energy industry on marine mammals and is currently based in Vancouver. He is a senior research scientist with SMRU Ltd., a company from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Tollit said much more research is needed, but so far he sees no empirical evidence of direct strikes by turbines on marine mammals. The Canoe Pass turbines turn at a sluggish 17 revolutions per minute – much slower than boat propellers allowed in the region. However, noise from generators and habitat change from construction are also a concern, said Tollit. Canoe Pass will be training underwater cameras and microphones on their turbines. A full review of predicted environmental impacts and how Canoe Pass plans to minimize them is listed on the Canoe Pass website.
It will be a personal journey for Knight in the next few months as his own company’s turbines get connected to the grid. “It’s got its challenges, but it will be a wonderful project – a feather for a lot of folks to tuck in their caps when we get it in the water and start generating electricity,” he said.
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Stephanie Orford is a freelance journalist based out of Burnaby.