8.6GW. Incredible. But I don't think fully damming the tide is necessarily the best answer. Of course, every energy source has ecological trade-offs, even solar

8.6GW. Incredible. But I don't think fully damming the tide is necessarily the best answer. Of course, every energy source has ecological trade-offs, even solar plants and windmills. Being serious, you can't complain about third world poverty, nuclear plants, carbon emissions, hydro plants and salmon runs at the same time unless you want to eliminate human civilization altogether. You have to accept the lesser of many evils if you think humans are worth it. But with so much potential energy, a network of small, cheap generators (the seed, not the feed, like Stephenson said) could have very low environmental impact, just sitting on the seafloor. I'm also interested in the idea of self-contained desalination units that operate on tidal power. I drew up plans for one when I was a teenager and the idea seems so under-used.