Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation: Interest Cools, Promise Remains in Bahamas (2014)

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Interesting, holy smokes...a major US military industrial complex player was very invested in the Bahamian government allowing OTEC building to start but it never happened and the MoU deal fell apart in recent years.

Amazing the things you learn about on GLP!

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For dovish progressives and nationalist conservatives, OTEC showed promise to wean the country from its reliance on coal and Middle Eastern oil. “The technology is still being developed in the laboratory, but if it succeeds on a large scale, it could eventually become an important tool in the nation’s battle against global warming and dependency on foreign oil,” New York Times reporter Kate Galbraith wrote in 2009.

For some environmentalists, OTEC showed more promise than better-known renewal energy technologies. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that oversees non-military-related maritime policy, boasted of OTEC's superiority to its wind and solar counterparts. OTEC “generates a constant, clean source of electricity,” NOAA wrote. “This constancy differs from the output of renewable resources such as wind and wave energy that sometimes produce intermittent electricity because of weather changes.”

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has sought to build an OTEC power station for decades, and from 2008 to 2010 the company received repeated public votes of confidence. The firm received at least $14.72 million in federal support to build a 10 megawatt ocean thermal energy conversion pilot plant on Hawaii. Makai Ocean Engineering, a Hawaii-based firm, received funding to help design and develop the plant.

Smaller firms, too, gravitated to OTEC. The Ocean Thermal Energy Corp., a Pennsylvania-based firm, made a deal with the government of the Bahamas to build a fully commercial OTEC plant, according to The Economist, which wrote in 2012 that “the technology may at last come to fruition.”

Ask leaders of the two companies about OTEC today, and they still insist the technology will bear fruit, but that optimism is tempered by new economic realities.

Last month, Marillyn Hewson, the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin, termed OTEC a “leading-edge” clean energy technology. Hewson placed the technology ahead of better known technologies such as tidal energy and smart grid solutions. Earlier in the year, Lockheed signed a contract with the Reignwood Group, a private Chinese property developer, to build a 10 megawatt plant off the coast of southern China. The company has said officials expect the station to operate by 2016 or 2017.

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