“New Technology Called OTEC” Brings a Smile to Our Lips

My father used to say all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right. And it certainly is good news that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is gaining a wider audience of appreciative “green” advocates.

Still, we had to smile when we came across this paragraph in a news story yesterday:

“But the (offshore) windmills also can be used to hold solar panels that would collect energy from the sun, underwater turbines that college energy from ocean currents and a new technology called ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) that uses the temperature difference between deep and shallow waters to run a heat engine.”

If 19th century technology is “new,” we’re all living in a post-new, post-modern futuristic age.

More power to North Carolina (pun intended), but we’re still holding out for the first pilot and commercial OTEC plants to be built here in Hawaiian waters. New, old – it doesn’t matter. Just build them.