not waving, employing

"It's hard to get a firm grasp on renewable energies.

These new, clean sources of energy have their supporters - legions of them, who believe wind, solar and other technologies hold the key to saving our planet. Others, who consider themselves “realists”, say that we are decades, possibly a century, away from these replacing coal and oil as the mainstays of our energy system. Besides, they add, the economics often don’t stack up. And investment interest in renewable companies has truly waxed and waned.

That scepticism is breaking down a little in regards of wind given the number of projects now under way or being planned, including the $2.2 million Silverton wind farm near Broken Hill. And, this morning, we have seen Transfield sell two wind farms to AGL .

Then there’s wave energy.

Wave energy hopeful Carnegie Corp is getting very excited about a report from the World Wildlife Fund Australia predicting that this technology will generate 3210 jobs in this country by 2020 and 14,380 jobs by 2050 - an amazingly precise number for 41 years hence. But if the federal government can confidently pinpoint 2021 as the year when the budget deficit will be paid off, who is to slight the WWF? The fund calculates that building 1500 megawatts of wave energy capacity by 2020 would meet 4 per cent of the forecast energy need for that year. The 2050 jobs number would require 12,500MW of wave energy capacity.

The WWF report, Power to Change: Australia’s Wave Energy Future, says that Australia’s near-shore wave energy has the potential to provide about four times the country’s present power needs.

This comes just a few days after The Wall Street Journal started a report with these words: “Wave energy is crashing into some powerful barriers“. Investors are losing patience, it said, adding that renewable energy into the mainstream; proven sources, like wind and solar, are siphoning off the lion's share of private investment and public support.

One listed Canadian player, Finavera Renewables, has already thrown in the towel, the company having surrendered a federal permit to build a wave power plant in the US. Finavera is now going to focus on wind farms."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25655114-15023,00.html