Wave energy positive for Pacific

Transcript

A new study in the Pacific indicates wave energy could work as an alternative to fossil fuels for some countries.

The study, by the Pacific Community, found the cost of generating energy through waves was comparable with wind or solar energy.

SPC Coastal Oceanographer Cyprien Bosserelle told Koroi Hawkins which areas would be best suited to using wave energy.

CYPRIEN BOSSERELLE:Turns out that all the islands south of 20 degrees south latitude, they receive a lot of swell from the southern ocean. So the Southern Ocean is churning a lot of storms and all these storms create big swells and these swells reach the Pacific Islands and so all the islands that are south of 20 degrees south receive a lot of wave energy, so any device that you can put out there will be producing quite a lot of energy, so the cost of generating that energy turns out to be a much smaller there.

KOROI HAWKINS: So we're talking countries like Tonga, Cook Islands and New Caledonia, why can't countries about 20 degrees south have affordable energy according to your calculations?

CB: We're not actually saying that they can't, it's just that these countries, it's going to be cheaper there.
When you go north of 20 degrees south, then the islands start to be well sheltered behind the other islands. If you take into account Vanuatu for example, they're sort of in the shadow of the waves from New Caledonia, they don't receive as much waves as New Caledonia does.

KH: And you've obviously crunched some numbers, how do other alternative energy sources compare to potential use of wave energy?

CB: We looked as a reference, how much it would cost to generate a given megawatt hour with solar panels, or with a large scale wind farm, so for example a large scale wind farm I always reference as being the cheapest way of generating renewable energy, but they're hardly feasible in small island countries. You can hardly see how a small country would use most of its space for a wind farm. But for a solar panels, the range of costs that we found are within the same range...

KH: You're recommendation from the study is that Pacific Island nations seriously look into this technology?

CB: Yes, so obviously because we took an economic perspective on this, we've missed a lot of things and , one of the things we couldn't do was what was going to be the cost on the environment to install one of those devices, and obviously you have to be careful where you place them, you don't want to place the device on top of a very pristine reef for example. So because we couldn't look into that then our recommendation cannot be to actually install one of these, but it's rather to investigate further.