photo: Jakanori
The first wave energy power plant has yet to be built off the California coast but a skirmish over who will control the seas has already broken out in Washington between utility PG&E and the city of San Francisco. Last February, PG&E (PCG) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, for preliminary permits to develop two 40-megawatt wave farms off the Northern California coast. Now the city of San Francisco – PG&E’s hometown – has asked FERC to deny the utility the wave energy permits. "While specifically not referring to this application, San Francisco believes the risk of sparking a ‘gold rush’ by ill prepared applicants with ill-conceived projects is too high and the drain on Commission resources in reviewing such applications would be too great," wrote San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Stephen A. S. Morrison in June 15 letter. Preliminary permits such as those PG&E are seeking give the holder three years to conduct a feasiblity study for a wave farm and then first dibs on obtaining a license for any resulting project. San Francisco, which Morrison stressed "is keenly interested in supporting the development of
local, clean, renewable energy, such as that anticipated in the
PG&E projects," fears that companies will "site bank," or lock up choice wave energy spots.
FERC is currently considering whether to change its wave energy permitting process. San Francisco supports scuttling the preliminary permit process and allowing all applicants to apply once they have a project ready for licensing. PG&E, on the other hand, believes the way to discourage site banking is to apply "strict scrutiny" to preliminary permit applications to ensure only legitimate projects proceed. "PG&E does not think FERC should prematurely reject pending new technology preliminary permit applications," wrote PG&E attorney Annette Faraglia.
So far San Francisco has not made any moves to oppose a proposed Chevron (CVX) wave farm that would be located adjacent to PG&E’s project off Fort Bragg in Mendocino County. The city and PG&E have long had a contentious relationship. Even as the two are currently cooperating on exploring the possibility of developing tidal power in San Francisco Bay, the city is considering dumping PG&E as its power provider in favor of securing its electricity elsewhere.
Some more details of the PG&E wave farms have emerged from federal filings. The utility is considering a number of wave energy technologies but currently anticipates that there will be between eight and 200 wave generators at each wave farm. PG&E plans to deploy and test several different types of wave generators at each site. But there will be numerous environmental hurdles to overcome before such projects can be built. In a letter to FERC, an Interior Department official said that PG&E’s Humboldt County project could affect at least three protected ocean-going bird species: the California brown pelican, the marbled murrelet and short-tailed albatross.
Green Wombat 
I concur with the idea of allowing PG&E to be granted a preliminary permit in undertaking a feasibility study off the coast of San Francisco while the FERC buy time in fine-tuning an environment-friendly policy or set of regulations to block incompetent or pretentious wave-energy companies.
I think that in many ways, if FERC is able to move foward with its initiative to expedite permitting for pilot projects (described here – http://carolynelefant1.typepad.com/renewablesoffshore/2007/07/ferc-proposes-s.html), then many of these problems will go away. Once, there’s a way for small scale pilots to be sited easily, developers who choose to snap up lots of permits instead of working on getting at least one pilot in place will lose out or be viewed as lacking credibility. Siting pilots isn’t really an option now as the only license process is one that takes five years. As a result, it makes more sense to put lots of sites under permit and study them and move ahead in bulk rather than devoting attention to getting projects in the water. But until there’s an expedited pilot process in place, strict scrutiny is really the only device that gives developers enough security moving forward while weeding out sham companies.
Frank Hartzell, a reporter in the Mendocino, California area, has written a series of articles on wave energy and currently has an article in the Ft. Bragg Advocate News on the corporate grabbing of wave power potential in the area. You have to read this! The link is
http://www.advocate-news.com/local/ci_6469172
(the article’s title has nothing to do with the article, for some reason.)
Unfortunately getting permits seems to be a problem with many alternative energy projects. For example, it took 5 years for the East River project in NY to get all the approvals. There are just too many groups screaming about their little piece of the pie to get much done here.
Europe seems to have a better track record from what I can discern.
The link mentioned in the comments about an article on the Ft. Bragg gazette doesn’t seem to be there anymore. I just get a screen saying its no longer an available article.
I do have some info on wave power projects at http://www.squidoo.com/wavepower