BRITAIN’S surfing capital is facing the ultimate battle of the breaks. Surfers on Cornwall’s Atlantic coast are fighting plans for a wave energy farm that will sap the power of the surf.
The £20m offshore chain of pumps and turbines will affect a 20-mile stretch of beaches, reducing the height of the waves by more than 10%.
Surfers fear the scheme will reduce popular learner waves to a ripple and take the “punch” out of the most towering swells, which can reach up to 12ft.
The power station project has set surfers against evironmentalists. John Baxendale, who runs a surf forecasting agency, said it could make the Atlantic as unsurfable as the Irish Sea.
“St Ives Bay has some beautiful waves and putting wave machines there is going to damage the quality of surfing. It could be like Blackpool,” he said.
The move was particularly baffling because other resorts were creating artificial waves to improve on nature, said Baxendale. “We are talking about spending millions of pounds in various places in the world to use electricity to generate waves. It seems a bit daft to do the opposite here.”
However, Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell, said surfers should not be selfish. “Of course it may reduce the wave size, but Cornwall has so many fantastic surfing beaches that we can help save the planet and still have enough surfing for everyone.”
The proposed power station, to become operational in 2008, will involve anchoring 20 sets of turbines, pistons and pumps 10 miles offshore in the path of the Atlantic swell. They will float on the surface and convert the power of the waves into electricity.
They will be strung out over a distance of three miles but, because of the angle of the prevailing swell, will affect the coastline from St Ives in the southwest to the fringes of Newquay, 20 miles away.
However, they will not interfere with Britain’s fiercest wave, the Cribbar, a breaker that batters the shore off Newquay, reaching heights of up to 40ft.
The scheme, called Wave Hub, is to be funded by £20m of public money and involve Ocean Prospect and Ocean Power Technologies, both British firms, and a company from Denmark. Plans submitted to ministers last week predict that it will generate £5m of electricity per year, enough to power 7,500 homes, equivalent to 3% of Cornwall’s demand.
A report published last week by the British Wind Energy Association estimated that wave power from the Atlantic and the Channel could generate up to 15% of Britain’s energy.
Nick Harrington, project director for the South West Regional Development Agency, said the scheme would cause the least possible disruption. “The worst case is about an 11% drop-off and that affects the beaches between Portreath and Chapel Porth, but doesn’t affect the beaches at Newquay.”
Surfers are unconvinced. Tyson Greenaway, 32, who runs the Gwithian Academy of Surfing at St Ives, describes the plan as “a huge concern”.
“We already lose about 21 days over the season to flat conditions and the real worry would be if that were more,” said Greenaway Chris Power, editor of Carve, the Newquay-based surf magazine, said: “The surf industry is worth such a huge amount that surfers wouldn’t stand for it.
“There is plenty of scope for the Wave Hub people to site wave-generating machines alongside cliffs where no one will be affected. I can’t see it going ahead.”
Surfing is worth more than £70m a year to the Cornish economy, with surfers spending £21m a year on boards, wetsuits and surfwear.