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"The Government is trying hard, but marine energy needs a clearer route map," he says. "The renewable obligation scheme [requiring electricity suppliers to buy a proportion of their power from renewable sources] favours the least expensive form of generation. But at the moment wind is cheaper, so why would you build a wave farm?"Labour has done a lot in the past year to promote marine energy But the technology is still in its infancy. Paul Jordan, programme manager at the Carbon Trust, a government quango, estimates that around £65m has been invested in the UK by the public and private sectors, which represents a tiny fraction of the funding for wind or nuclear.No venture capitalist or energy company will want to be the first to risk investing in a commercial-scale marine-energy project without significant government backing - which isn't there. "You need to do these experimental projects on a larger scale to learn how to bring down costs," adds Mr Rennie from Amec.
"We can't afford to build things just because it would be nice to do.". "If Sir Ken had his time again, I suspect he wouldn't have bought it - he's been exposed. He used to be hailed as some sort of retail guru, now he's looking foolish. So many things have gone wrong, and one of the biggest was probably arrogance." "If Sir Ken had his time again, I suspect he wouldn't have bought it - he's been exposed. On Thursday, the boss of the supermarket chain that bears his name said he was relinquishing his day-to-day operational responsibilities - after surviving an investor revolt against him.
Yet only last March, he was celebrating an extraordinary coup, beating off rivals to complete the £3.24bn acquisition of Safeway.Almost immediately, things went wrong. The group said it had underestimated the dire state of trading at Safeway, and a profit warning, the first in Wm Morrison's 37 years as a public company, was issued. Three more would follow, until last week the chain admitted it could no longer provide "reliable guidance" on full-year profits."It looks as if it's drowning under the pressure of absorbing a much bigger business," says Richard Hyman, the chairman of retail research firm Verdict. "What Morrisons was, and continues to be, is an extremely lean, focused business that has tried to absorb a company with a very different culture and some major structural and strategic differences - without making any changes to its own business.
