The World Energy Council has estimated that approximately 2 terawatts (2 million megawatts), about double current world electricity production, could be produced from the oceans via wave power.

Ocean waves carry tremendous power, and could, in theory at least, provide much of the world's electricity.

"What gives us tremendous hope with this technology is that our opening costs are substantially below where wind power started 20, 25 years ago."

Wind power has reduced its cost by 80% since, as the technology has been deployed and optimised, he says.

The United States uses about 4,000 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year. DOE estimates that the maximum theoretical electric generation that could be produced from waves and tidal currents is approximately 1,420 TWh per year, approximately one-third of the nation's total annual electricity usage.

calculate the maximum kinetic energy available from waves and tides off U.S. coasts that could be used for future energy production, and which represent largely untapped opportunities for renewable energy development in the United States.

The West Coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, has especially high potential for wave energy development, while significant opportunities for wave energy also exist along the East Coast. Additionally, parts of both the West and East Coasts have strong tides that could be tapped to produce energy.

Wave power varies considerably in different parts of the world, and wave energy can't be harnessed effectively everywhere

Total Annual U.S. Incident Wave Energy 2,110 terrawatt-hours

Wave energy is generally affected by three main factors: Wind speed - higher wind speed means more wave energy, because the energy is transfered from the wind to the wave. Fetch - the distance of open water over which the wave has travelled across makes a big differenece on wave height and wave energy, as a longer fetch gives the waves longer to 'grow'. Wind duration - with a longer storm, the waves will be bigger.

The visual impact of a wave energy conversion facility depends on the type of device as well as its distance from shore

"Worldwide, approximately 3000 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1 GW = 1 billion watts) of energy is continuously available from the action of tides.

The best areas are on the eastern sides of the oceans (western side of the continents) between the 40 and 60 latitudes in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

While the "wave power at deep ocean sites is three to eight times the wave power at adjacent coastal sites," constructing and mooring the site and transmitting the electricity to shore would be prohibitively costly.