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The OTEC permit office in the US was opened between 1981 and 1994, having issued not a single OTEC permit. When oil prices went down after the 1970s, the incentive to invest in OTEC faded. Renewable energy sources are now fashionable again, and there are several companies interested in this technology, from giants such as Lockheed Martin to smaller companies like the Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation of Lancaster, located in Pennsylvania.

Lockheed Martin is doing an experiment in Hawaii in collaboration with a smaller firm, Makai Ocean Engineering, to build a ten megawatt (MW) pilot plant that should be operational by 2015. If that gives positive results, the idea is to build a 100MW power station by 2020.

Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation is working on a smaller project with the Bahamian government to build a fully commercial OTEC plant. Initially the idea is to provide cooling for a holiday resort and then to build a 10MW power station.

If you are interested in renewable energies, read also Deep Heat.

George G. Szpiro, a mathematician, financial economist and journalist, has recently written a book called Pricing the Future. Options have been traded for hundreds of years, but for centuries nobody knew how to calculate their true value. Throughout history, mathematical and financial wizards tirelessly searched for the equation that would precisely establish their value and pricing. The problem was finally solved in 1973, and two of the discoverers – Myron Scholes and Robert Merton – received the Nobel Prize in 1997.

With narrative verve Mr. Szpiro describes the hunt for the elusive equation and the colourful personalities who conducted the spectacular search. He begins with the futures and options markets of the tulip bulb of the 1630s. Then, he writes about the Napoleonic ban on futures contracts and short sales.

Mr. Szpiro also includes forgotten characters, such as Jules Regnault, a self-taught broker’s assistant who wrote a book on the change of share prices over time and made a fortune trading shares. Another not so famous but great mind was Wolfgang Dölin, who obtained a PhD in mathematics at the Sorbonne and became a pioneering mathematician and innovator in the field of probability. He fought in the Second World War and, before shooting himself not to be captured by the German army, managed to post the sketch of a formula to the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

The envelope was opened only in May 2000, when it was found to contain the mathematical tools to describe the random movements of particles. These calculations modified the understanding of physics and paved the way to the building of the so-called Black-Scholes equation, which led to a flowering of options markets and an explosion of trading on them.