The ocean power market is still emerging but has made more progress towards commercial deployment in the past few years than in the previous hundred years.  Governments and localities with strong marine resources are waking up to the potential power sources just off their shores. The coming years will see tens if not hundreds of megawatts of utility-scale power generation from the oceans, first in Europe, then in the U.S.  The challenge to ocean energy is not science, but overcoming the regulatory morass and making the technology cost-effective and reliable. Permitting is probably more an obstacle to marine energy markets than financing. In the U.S., scores of regulatory bodies have jurisdiction over marine power deployment while in the UK, two agencies control permitting. Streamlining the permitting process and establishing a consistent and reasonable regulatory policy will enable the commercialization of these technologies. The companies developing these technologies have evolved substantially from their beginnings in the British ocean power research programs of the 1970s and early 1980s. In September 2008, the first full-scale commercial wave power array was brought online off the coast of Portugal, with many more soon to follow. With 11 separate technologies under development by 35 companies and 50 government- and university-backed research programs in 26 countries and more than 600 megawatts of commercial projects announced for deployment in the next eight years, the consensus among the wave experts and investment communities is that ocean power is poised to make a significant contribution to the global energy portfolio. Ocean Power in the Mix The value proposition for ocean power is twofold. First, ocean power technologies are based on well-understood principles derived from hydrodynamic physics, marine design and construction, and mechanical and electrical engineering. Unlike solar photovoltaics, which rely on innovations in materials research and processing technology to reap efficiency gains, the research, design and development processes for ocean power technology have been practiced for hundreds of years. As such, the capital and energy cost paths for ocean power technologies are relatively predictable. Second, ocean energy is an abundant, dense and predictable resource. Waves propagate over thousands of miles of ocean and their size and energy content can be known from three to five days in advance. Tides and marine currents are 832 times denser than the air flowing over wind turbines and are predictable up to the minute at least 100 years in advance. The March 2009 Greentech Innovations Report, the monthly market research report from Greentech Media, explores a question essential to renewable energy: What can we expect from ocean power and wave technology?  The report takes a deep dive into the nascent ocean power market and draws upon extensive investigations by our research team and the pioneering work from our senior renewable energy analyst, Daniel Englander. Average Annual Wave Energy Flux (kW/m)