Reply #9: Actually the DOE budget this year restarted the

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OTEC research. You wouldn't know it looking at their website but they are restarting research. The NREL folks are a bit behind the times. I'm a little fuzzy on the new designs but I guess there's a huge improvement with closed loops systems over the classic open loop systems. But you are correct, there is less potential on the west coast. But if you assume that you have to do some desal, then you're going to need a LOT of juice, as that process is energy intensive. Whatever you can extract from OTEC is better than putting in new coal/nuclear plants. Then there's the additional bonus of the infrastructure itself, from methane clathrate extraction to sea farming, research, CO2 dumping. Frankly, I don't see any other technology that can come close to matching the potential of OTEC. :cheers: