According to one researcher ' You can invent three new devices for getting energy out of the sea before breakfast, and two more after lunch if you're awake enough'. But will they work? Britain, at the moment, leads the world with more than ten designs for harnessing wave power. Kieran Pren diville and Judith Hann talk to researchers up and down the country who believe their ideas stand a real chance of success. But the Department of Energy and the Central Electricity Generating Board seem dedicated to a nuclear future; so is alternative energy just a dream or could we one day be switching on electricity that can never run out? In the end it all comes down to money: to how much it will cost. We do not know whether wave energy will ever appear to be as cheap as nuclear energy, but it could simply be that we are doing our sums the wrong way.