In 2008 along the UK shoreline small underwater buoys will be generating electricity using that age old technology: wave power. The advantages to putting the buoys 50 meters under the water surface lies in that storms will not damage them, surface wave-powered generators can be damaged by rough seas.

“A town with 55,000 inhabitants would need half a square kilometre of seabed covered with 100 buoys to power it,” says Grey.

He adds that they could be effective in the North Atlantic, from Scotland down to Portugal, along the Pacific US shoreline, from San Francisco in the US up to Vancouver in Canada, along the coast of Chile, and even in South Africa and New Zealand.

But calmer seas, such as the Mediterranean do not have enough wave height to pump the buoy.