Leading wave energy pioneer Prof Stephen Salter

What do you do when you’re the father of a whole industry? Do you sit back and relax, or carry on to pastures new? If you’re Prof Stephen Salter, widely acknowledged as the leading pioneer of marine energy, then you take the latter path.

Salter’s work on wave energy at Edinburgh University in the 1970s led to the development of the device known as Salter’s Duck, the first practical wave energy converter and the basis of the technology now used in machines such as the Pelamis ‘sea-snake’. Wave energy remains controversial — Salter still believes that development of the Duck was derailed by pressure from the nuclear industry — but not content with that, Salter is now deeply involved with an even more controversial sector. He’s convinced that geoengineering could be a valuable tool to mitigate some of the most pressing effects of climate change; and he believes that it could — and should — be implemented sooner rather than later.