The Life Scientific: Deborah Greaves

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve ever seen the ocean during a storm, you’ll understand the extraordinary power contained in waves. On an island nation like Britain, that power could well be harnessed to produce clean energy; so why have we barely begun to tap this bountiful resource? Deborah Greaves is trying to change that. As Professor of Ocean Engineering at the University of Plymouth, she combines physical wave tanks with sophisticated computer modelling to test how well wave power devices respond to stormy seas. And as Director of the Supergen ORE Hub, she brings together researchers in offshore renewable energy to imagine a future of widespread, eco-friendly ocean power. Deborah tells Jim Al-Khalili about growing up in Plymouth fascinated by the sea, and about breaking from the norm in her arts-focused family, to pursue a degree in engineering. But she spent years as a civil engineer building tunnels for the London Underground - and going on expeditions to the Arctic with her husband - before undertaking a PhD at Oxford University, exploring what happens when waves crash into solid structures. She eventually returned to Plymouth and set up the institute’s Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport (COAST) Laboratory - a building with a swimming-pool-sized wave tank for testing new technologies. As Jim hears, these wave devices have an extraordinary diversity of uses - and could help to propel Britain into a greener energy future.

(Photo: Deborah Greaves. Credit: Deborah Greaves)

Transcript

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0:37.0	exploring the important questions about long-running stories and the latest global news. An honest explanation of the events shaping
0:47.0	our lives. Search for the explanation, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.
0:54.0	Hello, my guest today grew up on the English South Coast in Plymouth,
1:00.0	where her childhood love of the sea and its power has fed into a remarkable career
1:04.9	during which his worked on harnessing that power to hopefully change the world.
1:10.0	Deborah Greaves has spent much of her life working in the field of fluid dynamics,
1:14.4	simulating what happens when ocean waves crash into solid structures,
1:18.7	which can be both a destructive force of course and a means of providing renewable energy.
1:24.0	Today as professor of ocean engineering at the University of Plymouth,
1:27.0	Deborah knows better than most how desperately we need to decarbonise our energy sources
1:32.0	and she believes our oceans can help.
1:34.3	Wave and tidal energy both have enormous potential in fact in terms of the
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