Reuters Europe's wave and tidal power technology is likely to disappoint EU expectations for 2020 and take over a decade to contribute to energy supply in a significant way, even though it is chalking up rapid growth and drawing in big industrial investors. The nascent industry has attracted a flurry of investor activity over the past year, securing an estimated few hundred million euros from companies such as Siemens and Vattenfall. It is making fast progress from prototype devices toward full-scale sea trials and promises to be more reliable than many types of renewable power that depend on the weather. But those numbers are far less than European Union expectations for 8.5 billion euros ($11.3 billion) of investment and generation capacity of 3.6 gigawatts installed by 2020. The technology, like other renewables, needs government financing help to reach commercial scale and then subsidies after that as it grows to more cost efficient. Its timing as a latecomer behind more established renewables such as solar and wind is unfortunate. Government financing is hard to come by while the euro zone faces a sovereign debt crisis and governments are cutting spending, including on renewable energy. Furthermore, its development costs are still far higher than for other renewables, including offshore wind power. "Any talk of gigawatts by 2020 is optimistic. We are more on course for hundreds of megawatts," said Charlie Blair, technology acceleration manager for marine at the Carbon Trust. Siemens, which increased its stake in UK developer Marine Current Turbines last month, sees double-digit annual growth rates for marine current renewables to 2020 from virtually zero now and expects it ultimately to meet 3 to 4 percent of global energy demand. "The big industrial players getting involved is what is needed to move this sector forward. Utilities are looking at these kind of projects, which will be on a similar scale to wind energy or conventional power plants," said Frank Wright, renewables manager at UK consultancy Douglas Westwood. Most experts expect the first large-scale commercial projects of 1 MW or more to emerge by 2016 or 2017 and ocean energy to start contributing to the EU power mix between 2025 and 2030. A big tidal device probably has a 1 MW capacity, but the next challenge is to get to five-to-10 MW arrays and then move to hundreds of megawatts by 2020 or beyond.
