More than 950 magnets create electricity behind Nathan Henshaw and Ean Amon, graduate students, as they test OSU's wave energy generation buoy. (photo: Ed Curtin)

Two research directors at Oregon State have signed on to an urgent letter to President-elect Barack Obama asking to include the ocean in the mix of renewable energy sources that merit funding for future research.

“During the campaign, we heard him speak of solar, wind, and geothermal energy,” said Bob Paasch, interim director of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center. “Now we’d like to hear solar, wind, geothermal – and ocean.”

Paasch and George Boehlert, director of OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, signed the brief document, “Ocean Renewable Energy: a Shared Vision & Call for Action,” along with 22 other key leaders representing environmental groups, academics, energy developers, investors, and utilities.

“It is critical to get these diverse parties together early in the game,” Boehlert said, “because we don’t want a spotted owl situation.”

“We want the energy developers to communicate with the environmental groups now to minimize confrontations later in the game,” he said. “Most everyone agrees that renewable energy is a good thing, but it must be done with adequate protection of the marine environment. Many other government actions, such as streamlining the permitting process, will facilitate proper development of this industry while including input from all ocean stakeholders.”

The project, facilitated over nine months by the Environmental Defense Fund, addresses one of the key challenges of the Obama Administration: growing the economy while securing a clean energy future for the United States.

Wave energy buoy off Newport lights its own lamp as dusk settles over the Pacific. (photo: Al Schacher)

“We’re looking for more funding on the federal level for environmental impact research and public outreach,” said Paasch.

Ocean renewable energy research is at a point where wind energy was 35 years ago, he said.

“The U.S. was the leader,” Boehlert added, “but the nation stepped out of the picture and Denmark, Germany, Holland, and others became the economic drivers of what is not a major worldwide industry.”

Ocean energy is in its “infancy,” both OSU directors agree, and because it is only now developing, there is a need to help bring the best and most innovative ideas to fruition – with government support, whether through tax credits or other incentives, Boehlert said.

“Ocean energy won’t ever be as big as wind,” said Paasch, “because wind blows in all 50 states and only a few states touch the oceans.”

OSU's wave energy generator buoy is pulled beneath the Yaquina Bay Bridge on its way into the Pacific. (photo: Larry Pribyl)

(To view a five-minute video clip of Oregon State’s wave energy generator buoy being deployed, click here.)

“But OSU can do it all: engineer the best technologies, study the environmental impacts, and do the community outreach to provide the state and coastal communities with the information they need to make good decisions based on sound science,” he said.

Boehlert agrees: “OSU is one of the nation’s strongest universities in ocean and coastal sciences.”

With the colleges of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Science, Agricultural Science and Engineering, and multi-disciplinary units such as Sea Grant, the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, Marine Mammal Institute, NNMREC and HMSC, “we have virtually all the elements necessary to move the marine renewable energy agenda forward,” he said.

“Our state is clearly a leader” especially given the Governor’s strong agenda, including the Oregon Wave Energy Trust, the director of the Marine Science Center said.

The letter to Obama, the leaders of such groups as the Central Lincoln People’s Utility District, the Environmental Defense Fund, Pacific Gas & Electric, Global Energy Horizons Inc., Portland General Electric and the Surfrider Foundation, make numerous key points, including:

• The need for a framework for testing and demonstration projects to determine whether technologies can be commercialized without unacceptable environmental risk;
• Expanded federal assistance is needed to finance state-of-the-art energy demonstration projects;
• The ocean is a renewable energy source, which could in turn become a significant source of green jobs for the U.S.;
• A number of bureaucratic and regulatory bottlenecks could be removed under existing laws and rules;
• The diverse group itself demonstrates that people of good faith can work together to help create a sustainable energy future for America and the world.

Chief mover behind the letter was the Environmental Defense Fund, Boehlert said. “They brought the parties together and conceived the idea, for which their efforts should be applauded.  It is significant because there is otherwise no mechanism to make this happen.”
~ by Ed Curtin

The document, along with the cover letter, can be downloaded at Ocean Renewable Resources Letter.

Most of those impacts, however, are largely unknown, and the report itself is being used as a guide for the flood of technological advances seeking to tap a clean, renewable energy source like ocean waves.

OSU's Pacific Storm pulls a wave energy buoy out to sea.

“It’s a framework for the key issues we need to address in marine ecosystems as wave energy develops in the Pacific Northwest,” said George Boehlert, director of OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and editor of the report.

“The high priority issues deal with potential impacts on marine mammals and seabirds, the effects on the physical environment, and changes to the (ocean floor) habitat,” Boehlert said.

“There also is a need to explore the cumulative effects of wave energy parks as the technology develops and commercialization efforts scale up.”
The report , available online only at http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/waveenergy, identifies five potential impact areas: fish, seabirds, marine mammals, pelagic habitat, and benthic habitat.

Meanwhile, OSU researchers in the College of Engineering tested their latest prototype in ocean experiments near Newport in late September.

“This has been a tremendous collaboration to help zero in on optimum designs,” said Annette von Jouanne, professor of electrical engineering, referring to OSU’s collaboration with Columbia Power Technologies and the U.S. Navy.

Oregon State research assistants adjust the wave energy research buoy that was deployed last week off Newport on the Oregon Coast.

Columbia is driving the effort to commercialization, and OSU is providing the support and research role, she said.

OSU engineers are helping to develop a “direct drive” buoy technology that they believe will have advantages of efficiency and reliability.

“Our ocean tests went exceedingly well,” said Ted Brekken, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering. “The buoy produced power, the hydrodynamic behavior fit our expectations, the deployment went well and we got a lot of data to work with.”

Experts are still estimating that wave energy, when fully developed, might be comparable to the potential of hydroelectric energy in the United States, and could ultimately supply as much as 10 percent of Oregon’s electrical power.

OSU’s wave energy research program is sailing forward on the crest of $13.5 million in new funds from federal and state sources awarded two weeks ago to the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center based at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

The new money will move the generation of energy by waves, ocean currents, and tides from the laboratory to part of the nation’s alternative energy future. The OSU project  is one of just two new marine renewable energy centers in the nation.

“This is just the beginning,” said Robert Paasch, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and interim program director of the center. “But we have no doubt that wave energy can become an important contributor to energy independence for the United States, and Oregon can lead those efforts.”