Oh buoy! California decision a blow for wave energy, and a Canadian developer
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Finavera Renewables, a Vancouver-based wind and wave power developer, has enough troubles these days. The publicly traded company has shares trading at 5 cents and as an untested newcomer to the developer scene it’s considered much riskier than more established rivals when it comes to raising money, whether that be equity or debt. Not good when you’re staring in the face of the worst credit-crunch and financial-sector meltdown in at least a generation.
Nothing a prescription of Ativan can’t deal with, right? But then the California Public Utilities Commission comes along and nixes a wave-energy power purchase agreement between Finavera and Pacific Gas & Electric, which agreed to buy electricity from the Canadian company’s 2-megawatt wave project — the first commercial wave contract in the country, experts say. It was to use Finavera’s AquaBUOY technology, devices that turn the kinetic energy of vertical wave motion into emission-free electricity.
Greentech Media has the messy details here. The bottom line is that the commission declared the power-purchase price too high and the technology too unproven to proceed. Finavera has since put on a brave face, saying it will focus its efforts on projects under development in Canada and Ireland. But as nobel or attractive or economic any of those projects could be, the sad reality is that in this market at this time there’s not much wiggle room for setbacks.
NOTE: Speaking of Darwinism, the credit crunch and those least fit to survive, read this post from the Globe and Mail’s Andrew Willis about the struggles wind developer EarthFirst Canada is having because of difficulty finding financing. The death watch is on.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
February 6th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Yet we spin and spin , all the while the clock keeps ticking , climate change , global warming pending , looming ,dooming,damming the next generations.
When will the time come for a shift in debt , rather a change to the new emerging non emmitting energy products and the new energy efficent products that use them.
The insurance that we will make it threw to the other side of these global problems is in the loosening the belt of the big corperate giants , banks , and insurance company’s .
Its time to put to bed what was working , stike that what got us here in the first place .
fossel fuels , and the emmitions from the abuse of thier use .
its time to use the long term low impact energy of the newest and best ideas available today , put people to work building these new units , installing them , running them ,and maintaining them .
Remember its not about us those that hold the riens of economic power as it stands its about the world we leave to our grand children , or may be that doesn’t matter .
They say you can’t take it with you but we sure wont be leaving much to those left behind at the rate we are going now .