From Harnessing wave power:

Wave or tidal power doesn’t get much attention in Canada, but technologies for extracting energy from ocean motion could end up following the same growth curves we have seen for wind and, more recently, solar power.

Canada’s two coasts and Nunavut have the potential to generate more than 150 terawatt-hours of clean electricity a year using ocean or tidal power systems. This represents about a quarter of the country’s annual electricity consumption, and the power would be predictable and constant – unlike wind and solar.

…

We also have to remember that ocean energy is more than simply about generating renewable, emission-free electricity. It could also play a significant role in dealing with a coming global water crisis.

What’s the connection? Desalination technologies that take salt out of ocean water will increasingly be relied on to address water scarcity problems around the world. Ocean-energy power plants can play a strategic, complementary role. By definition they have access to an endless supply of salt water as well as the electricity needed to turn that water into a drinkable product.

Drought-stricken Australia is serious about taking this path, as are a number of other coastal countries concerned about their long-term supply of water, including the United States. Clearly, future demand could be immense and the economic opportunities for Canadian companies equally massive.

See the article for more of one Canadian’s view of wave and tidal power.

I’ve said here before that I think wave and tidal power will have a much quicker uptake than solar or wind power. In part that’s because we’re no so much closer to the oil crunch (and the GW crunch), but it’s also due to the increasing challenges of delivering fresh water. Of course, these things interact–global warming is making the water situation much worse in many parts of the world, and rising electricity and fossil fuel costs make desalination more expensive.

From Global warming doubles number of hurricanes, study finds:

Global warming’s effect on wind patterns and sea temperatures have nearly doubled the number of hurricanes a year in the Atlantic Ocean over the past century, says a new study by US scientists.

Excerpts from the study by Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology were released in the United States late Sunday.

I have to be honest here: For quite a while the conventional wisdom was that global warming made hurricanes more powerful, but didn’t increase the number of storms. And I never understood this. Hurricanes get their energy from warm water, so I didn’t see why warmer water wouldn’t also make it easier for storms to form in the first place, all other things being equal. Now, it seems that the people who really know what they’re talking about in this area (i.e. definitely not me) are at least mixed in their conclusions on the whole “warm water equals more storms” point.

See the presentation by the authors of the above paper here (16-page, 4.3MB PDF), or the paper itself here (39-page, 363KB PDF).