New Power Generation technology, which uses the immense power of ocean waves is already at work in Portugal. This little country has proved its fantastic track record in use of renewable energy sources last year (2007), when it has achieved 40.7pc of all country’s electricity produced by renewable energy sources. Even though, the country lacks financial resources in comparison to richer countries, such as USA, Britain, Germany, Japan, France and others, Portugal’s leadership thinks on much grander scale as their EU and US counterparts.
Portugal has realized, that there is no breakthroughs on the field of renewable energy, without Critical Mass of Investment. Scientific and technological research and their implementation in new products, through mass production is the only way to lower the prices of new renewable technologies to be competitive to old and dirty fossil fuels and deadly dangerous nuclear power. Mr. Sharpe, a member of Babcock&Brown’s European Infrastructure Team said: ‘Scale is essential to reduce manufacturing and operational costs’.
At a scale of a power plant of 500MW, which estimated cost is Euro1.5 billion, wave energy is going to become competitive to wind power, measured in cost per 1 kilowatt-hour.
Wave as a renewable energy source is similar to wind, but more stable. Portugal has a capacity to cover about 20pc of all its electricity needs at a cost which is 66pc less than is the cost of wind power.
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Denmark is renowned by its wide use of renewable wind power, Portugal is getting famous by its use of wave power.