Why can’t we get power from ocean waves?

Almost all the ways we have to produce energy involve turbines set in motion by water vapor.

But a wave is not a substance that moves in its entirety.

It is the local oscillation of small regions in a mass of water. Kind of like people in a stadium who don’t move from where they are, they just get up and down.

To extract energy from such a movement, a complex system is needed that transforms this motion into one capable of efficiently moving a turbine.

Some methods exist, but even if they produce electricity they don’t do it cheaply, since building stuff in the ocean is very expensive.

Therefore, there is no economically viable system for producing electricity from waves, even if it is entirely possible.