Surfing Sustainable Style

While I can make no investment recommendation on the merits of Ocean Power Technologies (OPTT) pending capital raising venture, the offering does serve to energize my curiosity. The logic is simple: harness the constant motion of the ocean to generate electricity. Wave Power. OPTT argues that buoy's deployed across 300 square miles of the California coast could supply 60,000 megawatts of electricity. Enough power to supply California's total annual demand. Whether OPTT or any number of competitors is the eventual winner in this race is unclear, but let's discuss the potential. Think about this, the bulk of the world's population lives relatively close to the coast lines. Therefore, the transmission costs of moving the power from production to the grid tends to reasonable. Combine this with the obvious renewable aspect and it appears that the time may have come for significant research effort to be devoted to this emerging industry.