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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

20,000 megawatts under the sea: Oceanic steam engines
Jules Verne imagined this limitless power source in Victorian times — now 21st-century engineers say heat trapped in the oceans could provide electricity for the world. IF ANY energy source is worthy of the name "steampunk", it is surely ocean thermal energy conversion. Victorian-era science fiction? Check: Jules Verne mused about its potential in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870. Mechanical, vaguely 19th-century technology? Check. Compelling candidate for renewable energy in a post-apocalyptic future? Tick that box as well.

Claims for it have certainly been grandiose. In theory, ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) could provide 4000 times the world's energy needs in any given year, with neither pollution nor greenhouse gases to show for it. In the real world, however, it has long been written off as impractical.

http://www.uprm.edu/aceer/pdfs/MTSOTECPublished.pd f [uprm.edu] (PDF)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580.900 -20000-megawatts-under-the-sea-oceanic-steam-engin es.html [newscientist.com]

I could not let this one go uncommented by our resident experts. What do you make of this ?? Yet another pipe dream ?

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