Wave power, resulting from the transfer of energy from wind into water, represents a large potential source of energy for the UK, Europe and some other parts of the World. The wave power around the UK and Eire has an estimated annual average of 120 GW. When factors such as the need to avoid heavy shipping areas, the need to leave space between devices and the inability of devices to capture all of the incident energy are taken into consideration, the technical resource may be of the order of 25 GW. The technically achievable total world potential might be around 2000 GW. (8 pages)