Cornwall's surfers up in arms at plans to harvest wave energy

Construction of the world's biggest wave energy farm is to go ahead off the coast of Cornwall - after worries by local surfers who fear it may rob their waves of surfing power.

More than £21m of funding has just been agreed for Wave Hub, a giant electrical terminal on the seabed 10 miles off the coast of Hayle, near St Ives, through which wave energy devices can transmit the energy they generate along a high-voltage undersea cable back to the National Grid on shore.

When it is operating next year it is likely to support the largest array of wave energy machines in the world, and mark an enormous step forward in the development of wave power, which has long been the Cinderella in the family of renewable energy technologies - far less advanced than wind and solar power.

Renewables will be increasingly necessary in the fight against climate change, as they do not produce the greenhouse gases causing global warming.

But surfers in the South-west, which is Britain's principal surfing region because of the size of the Atlantic rollers hitting the beaches, have been afraid that the energy taken from the waves may result in them being substantially lower when the reach the shore, by as much as 11 per cent.

The beaches in the lee, the shelter, of Wave Hub on the North Cornwall coast stretch from Gwithian in the south up to Newquay, and include Portreath, Porthtowan and Chapel Porth.

However, this week, an independent study agreed to by the British Surfing Association and the South West Regional Development Agency, Wave Hub's developers, judged that the effects on wave height were likely to be less than surfers feared.

Kerry Black, a New Zealand-based physical oceanographer, has concluded that the project's impact is "expected to be low" at less than 5 per cent - or less than five centimetres off a metre-high wave. The South West RDA is planning to confirm this by using buoys to monitor the impact on surf conditions.

"Wave Hub is a world first and provides the opportunity to monitor the impacts of wave energy devices on shoreline surf conditions so that this data can be used for other projects around the globe," Dr Black said.

Some surfers have been reassured by his conclusions. Andy Cummins, the campaigns officer for the surfing environmental group Surfers Against Sewage, said that Dr Black's review was "good news for surfers, for the Wave Hub and for the global fight against climate change". He added: "We believe these comprehensive scientific studies should give further reassurance to all recreational water users that offshore renewable technologies and wave riders can exist alongside one another harmoniously."

Wave Hub will allow developers of wave energy devices to test new wave energy technology. Groups of devices will be connected to the terminal and float on or just below the surface of the sea to assess how well they work and how much power they generate before going into full commercial production.

The terminal will be connected to the National Grid by a 15.5 mile cable linked to a new electricity substation at Hayle. It could generate 20 megawatts of electricity, enough power for 7,500 homes or three per cent of Cornwall's domestic electricity needs.

Three wave device developers have already been chosen to work with the South West RDA on the project: Ocean Power Technologies; Fred Olsen; and WestWave, a consortium of E.On and Ocean Prospect, using the Pelamis technology of the company Ocean Power Delivery.

Wave Hub is expected to establish south-west England as a world leader in the development of wave energy technology, potentially creating hundreds of jobs in the future.