Company develops technology to harness boundless energy source within ocean — here’s why it’s important

A Dutch company has developed a way to harness the power of ocean waves to generate clean, renewable energy. Now, the technology has entered its testing phase — and if that testing proves successful, one customer is already lined up.

Dutch Wave Power was founded in 2020 with the stated goal to “fight global warming and reduce CO2 emissions to keep this world safe,” according to the company’s website.

In the last four years, the company has developed a “wave energy converter,” a device that consists of a drive line and pendulum system that creates electrical energy when rocked back and forth by ocean waves.

Now, with some funding help from the Offshore for Sure project — a group of 15 partners from Flanders and the Netherlands that are attempting to speed up the development of ocean-based clean energy projects — Dutch Wave Power has begun testing at a site near Scheveningen, a seaside region in the Netherlands, according to the news platform Offshore Energy.

If that testing goes off without any hitches, Dutch Wave Power’s wave energy converters will soon be supplying clean, renewable wave energy to actual people in the nearby Dutch Wadden Islands, which include the islands of Vlieland, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog, and Texel.

While most of the world’s clean energy development so far has focused on wind and solar energy, Dutch Wave Power is showing that those are not the only natural forces on Earth that can be harnessed to provide renewable power. These clean energy sources help move us away from dirty, non-renewable energy sources like gas and oil that have created so much air pollution and environmental destruction while contributing massively to the overheating of our planet.

Dutch Wave Power is not the first company to create similar wave energy technology. However, Alex Zakheos, the co-CEO of another such company, SWEL, made it clear that he does not believe that these companies are in competition with each other. 

“We’re trying to compete with fossil fuels,” he said, per CNET.

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