• Some researchers have proposed the use of wave power to generate electricity.waves image by Melva Vivian from Fotolia.com
  
  Different regions of the earth's surface receive different amounts of heat from the sun -- the polar regions, for example, receive less sunlight than equatorial regions. This uneven heating creates differences in air temperature and pressure that cause wind. Winds blowing out at sea cause waves to form; these waves travel across the ocean surface and break on shores and beaches around the globe. Some researchers have proposed wave power as a possible source of electric energy.
  
  

Renewable

• The most important advantage is that wave energy is renewable and cannot be depleted. As long as the sun heats the earth and winds drive ocean waves, we will never "run out" of wave energy. Fossil fuels, by contrast, are replenished so slowly by natural processes that for are essentially non-renewable. Once we run out of fossil fuels, we won't have any more. If wave energy proves practical, it might help to replace fossil fuel combustion as a source of electric power.
  
  

Air Pollution

• Unlike fossil fuels, wave power doesn't cause air pollution. Exploiting wave energy doesn't release greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxides or other undesirable byproducts. Building and manufacturing the necessary equipment may involve fossil-fuel combustion, of course, so wave energy can indirectly cause air pollution. But since the system doesn't generate greenhouse gases once it's in operation, it is a relatively clean source of energy.
  
  

Environmental Impact

• Wave energy has disadvantages as well. Building and installing the requisite equipment, for example, could locally impact the marine environment, depending on how the system is designed and constructed. Wave energy systems that rely on hydraulics might accidentally leak fluids that could be toxic to marine organisms. Engineers will need to take these considerations when designing wave energy systems for specific locations.
  
  

Storms

• By their very nature, wave energy systems are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of local weather conditions. It might be difficult to construct a wave energy system that could withstand gales and violent storms without sustaining serious damage.
  
  

Location and Cost

• Some regions receive much more wave energy than others. The Outer Continental Shelf Alternative Energy site lists the northwestern U.S. coast, the western coast of Scotland and the coasts of southern Africa as areas where wave energy might be sufficient to generate electric power. For wave energy to be feasible in these locations, however, the cost of implementation will need to be competitive with the cost of energy generation using other sources. Since there are currently no commercial-scale wave energy power plants, data on the costs of wave energy is still fairly scarce. There are many unknowns in assessing the cost of wave power.