The potential for electricity and jobs

YOU need only stand on a beach to get a feeling of energy all around you — sun and wind on your face, the power of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tides. But, very little of that energy is being harnessed.

Increasingly, however, experts are being forced to look to the sea as a source of energy and a significant amount of our energy may be provided from the ocean in the next decade, according to early indications from research being carried out off the Galway coast.

Late last year, Ocean Energy Limited, with the help of University College Cork, completed extensive tests in severe weather conditions off the west coast that proved Irish-designed and built wave energy technology can generate a commercially viable source of electricity.