§ Mr. Rostasked the Secretary of State for Energy, further to the reply of the 602W hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadiei), Official Report, 13th February, column 19, if he will make a statement detailing the sources from which the estimate was made that the cost of generating electricity from wave power might be three times the present cost of nuclear generation.
§ Mr. EadieAs I said in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) on 13th February, it is difficult to assess the cost of generating electricity from waves at present. Experiments so far have been on a small laboratory scale and solutions to a number of the engineering problems are still to be found. Rough costing exercises are being undertaken with the aim of identifying where design effort should be con centrated to have maximum impact on overall costs, but these estimates are not sufficiently reliable to form a useful basis for a detailed public statement at this stage.