We participated in the Green Planet Monitor podcast discussing how to fight against climate change.

After two centuries of burning fossil carbon, trashing the atmosphere, pushing Earth systems to the brink of collapse, industrial societies desperately need to develop other sources of energy that fight against climate change — and quickly. The prospects are frightening. But climate angst has an antidote: tested, renewable technologies of all sorts. Wind and solar come immediately to mind.

There’s another vast energy storehouse on half the world’s doorstep — Earth’s oceans. Covering three quarters of the planet’s surface, they store colossal volumes of heat, that can be tapped. So can the energy from ocean waves and tides. This past week, several hundred entrepreneurs came together to showcase innovative devices for doing just that.

Talking about the energy of ocean tides — rising and falling like clockwork under the influence of the moon — no better place to tap this huge resource than the Shetland Islands, on the northern tip of Scotland, and in the Bay of Fundy, between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, in eastern Canada, with the highest tides in the world.

That’s what a company called Nova Innovation is doing. Simon Forrest is founder and CEO. In a quiet spot on the margins of last week’s Ocean Energy Europe conference, in The Hague, Simon and I sat down for a chat.