Tidal Energy

An interesting little piece about a new form of tidal electricity generation.

Harnessing the vast energy of the UK's coastal tides could become much simpler and cheaper with a new design for the next generation of underwater turbines.

Leaving aside the technical details (essentially, put it the other way around, vertical not horizontal, as can be done with certain windmill designs) this is good news. Cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain than current designs. All good stuff.

However, this isn't a good argument for immediately investing in installing renewables. In fact, it's an excellent argument for not installing yet.

For we've still got these new designs coming out, the potential systems we might install are becoming cheaper and cheaper all the time.

We've an argument to keep spending on research, on test and pilot installations, but not on full scale installations because the technology we have simply isn't mature.