How Waves Could Quietly Overtake Solar & Wind

Author: Matt Ferrell

Every crashing wave delivers a pulse of power. Add them all up, and the ocean carries more energy than the roughly 30,000 TWh of electricity generated globally in 2023.¹² But for decades, wave power has been a sea of broken dreams — sunk prototypes, busted budgets, and forgotten startups.

Until now.

In 2023, buoys from a Swedish company called CorPower survived record-breaking 60-foot waves — and kept sending clean power to the grid. They don’t just ride the waves — they tune into them, using smart engineering to amplify their motion and squeeze out more energy from every swell. With costs plunging and the first full wave farms on the horizon, a decades-old dream might finally be about to break through.

So the question is: Is wave energy finally ready for prime time — or will it be just another shipwreck in the history of clean power?

2024 marked a milestone in global electricity: for the first time, more than 30% came from renewables like hydropower, solar, and wind.³⁴ We’ve harnessed the power of the sun, skies, and rivers — but the ocean’s immense energy remains largely untapped. According to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), wave energy converters (WECs) installed within 10 miles of the U.S. coastline could generate 770 TWh annually. That’s enough to power 71 million homes and cover 18% of the country’s electricity needs as of 2023. Go farther offshore, and wave energy could potentially supply up to a third of U.S. demand.⁵⁶⁷ So… why aren’t we doing it?

Turns out, we’ve been trying — for decades — and have a trail of sunken costs to prove it. Oceanlinx, for example, lost two floating generators off the coast of Australia.⁸ Then there’s Pelamis, the “sea snake” WEC that launched the world’s first wave farm in Portugal — and folded during the 2008 financial crash.⁹ Newer concepts, like EEL Energy’s undulating membrane, show promise, but most never make it past small-scale testing.^{10 11} In the choppy waters of R&D, funding gaps have scuttled more projects than storms ever did.⁸

Part of the challenge is that wave motion isn’t like the steady push of wind, rivers, or even tides. You can’t just stick a turbine in the water and let spinning blades do the work. Throw a rubber duck — or a floating WEC — into a wave, and it follows a looping path: rising and surging forward with the crest, then sinking and drifting back with the trough. After decades of research, we still don’t have a single, go-to design that can reliably turn those watery loop-de-loops into electricity.¹²⁸

Whatever design wins out will need to handle more than just the open sea. It has to ride out shifting wave heights and periods, survive violent winter storms, and endure for decades in a harsh, corrosive marine environment. Testing that design? It takes permits, subsea electric cables, and—yep—money, money, and more money. But once a viable solution is locked in, the potential to deliver clean energy in a world of surging electricity demand is too good to ignore.¹³

Wave energy shines where other renewables fall short. According to Stanford researchers, offshore wind in California can stall for around 1,000 hours a year—but the ocean only goes still for 200.¹⁴ Combine wind and wave, and that downtime shrinks to just 100 hours annually. Waves also make a great companion to solar, not just because they roll in 24/7, but because they peak in winter—when the sun is low and solar generation drops. Along the U.S. West Coast, wave energy in winter is roughly four times higher than in summer.¹⁵

That reliability has real grid-level benefits. Organizations like Australia’s Blue Economy Cooperative Research Center argue that wave energy’s consistency can ease our reliance on costly, large-scale battery storage by filling the gaps left by wind and solar.¹²¹⁵ If wave and wind power get cheaper as expected by 2050, pairing them could reduce the total amount of energy we need to generate for a zero-emissions grid in the Western U.S. by as much as 17%.¹⁵

There’s also a cost-saving kicker: co-locating wave energy converters with offshore wind farms. One permit. One survey. Shared vessels, shared crews, and—most importantly—a shared subsea cable, which is one of the priciest parts of getting offshore electricity to shore.¹² Wave Energy Scotland estimates that pairing a 100 MW wave farm with a 500 MW wind farm could cut the wind project’s capital costs by 7%—and the wave project’s by a whopping 40%. Bundle them together, and total costs drop 12%, just by sharing infrastructure and operations.¹²

Meanwhile, another wave energy contender has raced ahead toward commercialization.¹⁶¹⁷ In 2018, Swedish company CorPower Ocean tested a prototype at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Scotland.¹⁷ Think of EMEC as Europe’s version of PacWave—except it launched way back in 2003, decades earlier.¹⁸ After Brexit, CorPower relocated to mainland Europe, taking over the very site of the failed Portuguese wave farm I mentioned earlier.¹⁹

By 2023, CorPower’s latest commercial-scale WEC—rated at 300 kW—was already peaking at 600 kW on the grid. With a few design tweaks, the company now believes a single unit could hit 850 kW.¹⁷

CorPower’s 9-meter-wide (30 feet) buoy doesn’t spin like a turbine — it bobs and pulls. What’s known as a “point absorber” design floats on the surface, tethered to the seafloor by a tensioned mooring line. As waves roll by, it moves up, down, and side-to-side, driving a mechanical system inside the buoy that generates electricity.²⁰

The clever part? A built-in tension system pulls the buoy downward between crests, letting it harvest energy not just as it rises, but also as it sinks — squeezing more power from every wave cycle.²⁰ But the real magic is WaveSpring, a resonance tech developed with NTNU that times the buoy’s motion to the rhythm of the sea. Like a trampoline jumper syncing every bounce, WaveSpring boosts energy capture even in small waves. In tests, CorPower’s buoy moved nearly 3 meters (10 feet) in 1 meter (3-foot) waves.¹²²¹²²

And now, CorPower’s adding AI control systems to fine-tune performance in real time.²³ In storms, the system can detune the buoy — making it more transparent to waves, like how turbines feather their blades to spill wind and survive high gusts.²²

CorPower’s buoys faced their ultimate stress test when four winter storms battered its Portuguese test site. One of those storms brought record-breaking waves—up to 18.5 meters high. Yep, those six-story breakers I mentioned earlier. Not only did all four buoys survive, but they re-tuned themselves and resumed delivering power to the grid once the storm fronts passed.²²

That’s a major win—but there’s another kind of test you can’t fast-track: the test of time. The ocean is a punishing place for machinery. Saltwater corrodes metal, and constant wave motion stresses every moving part. CorPower currently estimates a 20-year lifespan for its buoys, with the potential to stretch that to 25 or even 30 years as the tech matures.²⁴ That puts it on par with wind and solar—at least on paper. But one big question mark is how well the buoy’s seals will hold up. These seals are crucial, keeping sensitive internal systems dry as the buoy moves up and down along its shaft.²⁵

As you can imagine, that doesn’t exactly scream “low-maintenance” or “eco-friendly.” Leaking hydraulic fluids or debris from damaged WECs are one environmental concern—but there’s more. Underwater noise, both from installation and operation, can disrupt marine life, stress animals, drive away fish, dolphins, and whales, or interfere with their communication.²⁶

That said, CorPower is doing things a bit differently. Unlike offshore wind turbines, which are typically anchored with steel piles hammered into the seabed,²⁷ CorPower’s UMACK anchor is vibrated into place—a process that’s 15–20 decibels quieter.²⁸ As for day-to-day noise, CorPower measured ambient underwater sound levels at the Portuguese site before deployment, but we’re still waiting on data showing how their buoys may have changed the underwater soundscape.²⁹ That kind of monitoring will be key to understanding the full acoustic footprint of future wave farms.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about how dense wave farms might affect marine ecosystems. On the plus side, by soaking up wave energy, WECs could reduce storm surge and help protect coastlines. On the flip side, they might alter sediment flows or affect water quality.¹² The devices themselves—along with their anchors and cables—can act like artificial reefs, creating new habitat for marine life. But that can also attract invasive species.²⁶

Another big unknown: electromagnetic fields from underwater power cables. Some species—like sharks, rays, and sea turtles—can sense these fields, and we still don’t fully understand how that might affect their behavior. Even bottom-dwelling creatures near the cables could experience changes in development or growth.²⁶ That’s why the first wave farms will need serious environmental monitoring—not just good vibes, but real data—before we go all-in on scaling up.

In some ways, it’s still a wait-and-sea… but we might not have to wait long. Just 4 kilometers—about 2.5 miles—off the coast of County Clare in western Ireland, CorPower plans to deploy its first 5 MW wave array in 2026, scaling up to 30 MW by 2028, alongside a floating offshore wind farm. The project is backed by a public-private partnership between Ireland’s utility ESB and blue economy developer Simply Blue, with up to €39.5 million in co-funding from the EU Innovation Fund.³⁰³¹ Once online, the array is expected to generate 15 GWh per year—enough to power 4,200 homes and avoid 27,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions over its first 10 years.³²

That 30 MW Irish project is a big step—but it’s just the beginning. An independently verified cost model suggests CorPower’s levelized cost of energy (LCOE) could eventually match solar and onshore wind, falling between $32 and $43 per MWh.³³ The catch? We won’t see that price until wave energy scales up to around 20 GW of capacity. That’s about 67,000 buoys, assuming each one stays at 300 kW.

But the cost curve starts bending earlier. After just 2,000 buoys—or 600 MW—the LCOE is expected to drop below $76 per MWh, landing on par with offshore wind. That milestone could be hit as soon as 2035.²⁴³⁴ And because wave power kicks in when wind and solar dip, the real system cost might end up even lower than that.

So how is it getting so cheap, so fast?

CorPower says it’s prioritized LCOE—levelized cost of energy—from day one in its design process. Rather than using the typical heavy steel hull, which is costly, corrosion-prone, and tied to unpredictable metal prices, the company opted for a composite fiberglass and resin structure. It’s the same kind of material used in speedboat hulls and wind turbine blades: strong, lightweight, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.

As CorPower’s former managing director Miguel Silva explained to Enlit in April 2024:

“We moved to a high-efficiency, mostly fully automated process to manufacture from resin and fiberglass. So this immediately gave us a 70% reduction on LCOE.”³⁵

That said, wind power has taken heat for its fiberglass turbine blades, which are notoriously difficult to recycle. But a new resin might soon change that—we covered it in a past episode, which I’ll link to in the description.

CorPower’s next power move? Mobile factories. The company plans to build the drivetrain in Sweden, but the buoys themselves—on site, wherever “site” happens to be. When the job’s done, the whole buoy-making setup packs up and moves on, like a clean energy traveling circus. That’s a big deal when your devices are nearly 30 feet wide and 60 feet tall: hollow, but huge. Building on-location keeps transport costs down, trims the carbon footprint, and helps keep the rollout rolling.³⁶

And that matters—because the fastest way to lower wave energy’s LCOE is to build as many devices as possible, as quickly as possible. Just like solar and wind, wave power needs economies of scale and a whole lot of learning-by-doing.²⁴ It also needs public research funding and financial incentives—the same boost wind and solar got to reach escape velocity.³⁷

The International Energy Agency crunched the numbers: getting wave energy to market price by the mid-2040s could require around $74 billion in public subsidies if we invest early in R&D. But if we underfund the early stages, we could end up spending more than twice as much waiting for the tech to catch up. The good news? It doesn’t take a tidal wave of cash. The IEA estimates that if just 20 countries chip in $11 million a year now, and $7 million after 2030, we could ride the cost curve all the way to parity.³⁷

Europe’s already waxing its board. Between 2007 and 2019, European nations invested around $530 million into wave and tidal projects, which attracted nearly three times that in private capital.¹² Sweden’s CorPower Ocean alone raised $34 million in venture capital in late 2024, then secured another $18 million from the European Innovation Council Accelerator in early 2025—bringing its total funding to over $100 million.³⁸³⁹ With nearly half of the world’s wave energy patents and 10 grid-connected test sites, Europe is pulling ahead.¹²

The U.S. is paddling hard to catch up. Since 2019, it’s approved $520 million in ocean energy funding. Oregon’s test site is expected to go live soon, and California has passed a bill requiring the state to identify sites for future wave farms.¹² But recently, federal clean energy funding was blocked,⁴⁰⁴¹ before a court ruling got things flowing again.⁴² And with offshore wind permitting still paused,⁴³ it’s fair to ask: is the tide of U.S. support for ocean energy coming in… or going out?

Then there’s Australia. With the mighty Southern Ocean at its doorstep and the largest wave energy resource on Earth, it’s somehow still just watching from the shore. Less than 2% of the $1.5 billion invested by its Renewable Energy Agency has gone to wave power—though the Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre is hoping to coax the government into finally wading in.¹²⁴⁴

With public and private funding finally starting to flow, companies like CorPower Ocean are moving beyond prototypes and into real-world projects.