Britain must not lose its lead in the development of marine energy like it did with wind power, and should focus on reducing costs and setting ambitious deployment targets beyond 2020, a report by a parliamentary committee said Sunday.

Seven out of the eight large-scale prototype wave and tidal devices installed worldwide are in the UK but are not expected to make a large contribution to its energy mix before 2020.

Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Wednesday said India must develop its hydroelectric, thermal and alternative sources of energy in response to a growing coal shortage.

Shinde told a FICCI conference on power that he expected the mineral, which generates 65 per cent of India’s electricity, to generate the majority of power capacity added over the next five years. A lack of domestic supply of the mineral is making the country more dependent on imports, he said.

The country could meet its demand for electricity to some extent by utilising untapped potential of generating energy from sea wave, an expert said here yesterday.

National Oceanographic and Maritime Institute (NOAMI) has recently undertaken a project to explore possibility of generating renewable energy.

The project titled "Electricity Generation from Sea Wave (EGSW)" is being funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT.

The future of the world’s biggest wave energy project has been cast into doubt after RWE, the German utility, pulled out of the Siadar scheme on the Scottish island of Lewis.

The Siadar Wave Energy Project had been intended to generate 4MW of electricity from next year onwards. This would have been enough to power 2,500 homes, accounting for a third of the population of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides.

KOCHI: With climate change and energy crisis fast becoming a reality, scientists all over the world have started looking for solutions to tide over the crisis.